UX14 - UX as Business Strategy (Liam Friedland)

@liamfriedland | UX India 2014
UX as Business Strategy
strategic
organizational
operational
Interaction
TM

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@liamfriedland | UX as Business Strategy
Acknowledgement
The ideas and content in these slides are the
result of a 14 year long creative collaboration
with Jon Innes. Over the years Jon and I
have had many lengthy and animated
discussions on the topics of UX strategy,
leadership, management, and tactics. The
fruits of our chats have resulted in a series of
tutorials, workshops, and presentations that
have been delivered at CHI, UXPA, UX Strat,
IXDA, and now UX India.
Any errors in these slides are entirely my own.

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Conceptual framework for workshop
strategic
organizational
operational
Interaction
TM
Moving to a strategic orientation
• Framework as a means for thinking about UX
activities as they relate to core business processes
• Benefit from a systematic, structured, approach
• Process areas function as lenses to focus thinking
and approach
• Interaction between key processes to create
business value

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Why does UX need to be strategic?
Effective UX organizations imagine the future
• Scenario planning + risk reduction
• More accurate + early determination of product concepts
UX becomes a differentiating factor in a
commodity market
• Competitors develop comparable offerings over time
• Mainstream markets value UX more than early adopters
High technology businesses are maturing
• Design becomes a more distinct phase
• Design orgs become innovation competency centers

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Need to move from this worldview…
One external worldview of UX teams
UX as consulting / service organization
• Design: Makes things look good
• Usability: Tests to find bugs after the code is working
• Not a core business competency
• Important but not essential
• Practitioners don’t have a good sense of business issues

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…to a more strategic orientation
Strategic worldview of the UX team
New framework: Strategic UX
• Innovation driver
• UCD informs all aspects of product direction
• Essential—no product development without UX
• Key contributions throughout the development cycle
• Business value is large, wide-ranging, and demonstrable
• Quantifiable, reproducible, high-quality processes

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Operational processes
strategic
organizational
operational
Interaction
TM
Overview
• UX outputs
• Measuring UX investments

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UX outputs
UX
Formative
Research
Summative
Research
Interaction
Design
Information
Architecture
Visual
Design
Concept
Prototyping
TM: Jon Innes | UX Innovation

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High
Low
Level of Effort
Measuring activity levels: Design-focused teams
Design-focused

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High
Low
Level of Effort
Measuring activity levels: Research-focused teams
Design-focused Research-focused

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High
Low
Level of Effort
Measuring activity levels: UX-focused teams
Design-focused Research-focused UX-focused

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Organizational processes
strategic
organizational
operational
Interaction
TM
Overview
• Effective cross-organizational collaboration
• Broadening perspectives with joint initiatives
• Disciplinary blinders

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Collaboration is key
Big picture, organizational perspective
• Step outside of your cube or office & engage
• Perform an organizational audit
• Establish a foreign policy
• Define your goals and strategies for influencing others
• How do you interact with other groups in your company?
• Cultivate allies in other groups to help + help you
Initiatives of common interest

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UX outputs + organizational synergy
Market Research
Innovation Mgmt.
Project Mgmt.
Support
Subject Matter Experts
Documentation
Brand
Quality
Marketing
Sales
Engineering
Product Mgmt.
TM: Jon Innes | UX Innovation
UX
Formative
Research
Summative
Research
Interaction
Design
Information
Architecture
Visual
Design
Concept
Prototyping

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Disciplinary lenses as blinders
Developers
As seen by
Designers
As seen by
PM
As seen by
QA
As seen by
Developers Designers PM QA

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Strategic processes
strategic
organizational
operational
TM
Overview
• What is strategy + what it isn’t
• Forces impacting business
• Inflection points
• Case study
Interaction

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Strategy
Unique + valuable position
Strategy is not:
• A vision
• A plan
• Optimization of the status quo, i.e., refinement
• Following best practices
• Efficiency measures
• Innovation or technology
Strategy is:
• Differentiation activities: Where to play
• How to win
• Core capabilities & effective combinations
• Management systems
• Saying no to say yes

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Six forces impacting businesses
The Business
Power, vigor, and competence of
existing competitors …of complementors …of customers
…of suppliers …of potential competitors
Possibility that what your
business is doing can be
done in a different way
From “Only the Paranoid Survive” by Andy Grove

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Strategic inflection points
Business goes on to new heights
Business declines
* Requires a fundamental transformation from what you were to what you will be
Inflection Point *

From “Only the Paranoid Survive” by Andy Grove

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Inflection points in detail
Agile UX
Distributed development
University to online learning
Nuclear family to aging boomer
Database to big data
Blackberry to Smart Phone
iPod to iPad to Watch
Laptop to tablet
Lab testing to remote usability testing
Enterprise to pro-sumer
Brick & mortar to eCommerce
Hardware to software
Local to global
Software utilities to enterprise security
Lean startup
Version 23 to concept car
Total design management
Data-based design
West to east
Market
Tech
Product
Process

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Case study: Concept Car | Forces + inflection point
Forces
• Acquisition strategy fragments product architecture
• Mature competitors integrate offerings
• Startups deliver innovative solutions
• Users & field teams demand improvements
Inflection Point
• Product focused:
• Fragmented offerings
• Unified, cloud-based concepts
• Create a shared vision—a new way of doing business

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Case study: Concept Car | Current + future activity levels
Before
High
Low
Level of Effort
Concept Car

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Case study: Concept Car | Organizational synergies
Synergies
• Collaborate with PM’s to build a shared
understanding of competitive trends
• Collaborate with Architects to build a shared
understanding of data technology trends
• Conduct market demographic research to understand
next generation’s (millennial’s) technology
preferences and share with organization
• Conduct UI technology research to understand new
trends and share with organization
• Collaborate with marketing to enhance product
branding and extend and renew the visual language
• Evangelize and share knowledge company-wide in
order to get execs and products teams energized by
and enrolled in the new vision

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Group Activity

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Group activity | Tying it together
Instructions
• Form teams of 6
• Select a captain for each team
• Read through the provided case study with your teams
• Team Work on the case study:
• Describe the forces at work?
• Describe the inflection point?
• Current UX activity levels for your team (provided)
• What are the future UX activity levels for your team?
• What new activities will be necessary?
• What will be the effort levels for new activities?
• How do your activities synergize with other teams at the
company?
• Prepare a presentation to your execs:
• 1 page with Forces + Inflection point
• 1 page with Activity Levels
• 1 page describing the synergies of the activities with other
teams at the company
strategic
organizational
operational
Interaction
TM

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UX14 - UX as Business Strategy (Liam Friedland)

UX14 - UX as Business Strategy (Liam Friedland)

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