UX Encyclopedia

UX Strategy

UX strategy = the plan connecting user needs, business goals, and design execution: what experience, for whom, why us, and how we'll know it's working. Without it, design output is decoration on an unvalidated idea.

Try it — run one feature through the Kano evaluation table. Answer Kano's two questions — how you'd feel with the feature and how you'd feel without it — and the standard evaluation table classifies it as Must-be, Performance, Attractive, Indifferent, Reverse or Questionable. Basics first, always.
1. How would you feel if the product HAD Dark mode?
2. How would you feel if it did NOT have Dark mode?

Answer both questions and the evaluation table will classify the feature.

The four tenets (Levy, UX Strategy)

  1. Business strategy — how the product wins (cost vs. differentiation; Porter): know the model, the market, the moat.
  2. Value innovation — pursue differentiation AND lower cost/effort by redefining the problem (Kim & Mauborgne, Blue Ocean Strategy) — the UX version: kill accepted pain instead of adding features.
  3. Validated user research — evidence before build (Lean cycle: build-measure-learn, Ries 2011; discovery interviews, landing tests, Wizard-of-Oz prototypes).
  4. Killer UX design — the differentiator embodied in the experience itself (Uber's one-tap ride is strategy AS interface).

Strategy artifacts worth making

  • UX vision (1 page or storyboard): the experience 2–3 years out; aligns teams better than a feature roadmap.
  • Experience principles (3–5, opinionated, decision-making tools): "Fast beats complete," "Never make the user re-enter anything" — useless if they'd fit any product.
  • Jobs-to-be-Done framing (Christensen; Ulwick): users "hire" products for progress in a circumstance — define the job, not the demographic. Personas (Cooper) remain useful for empathy/communication when research-based, not invented.
  • Journey map of the CURRENT state with pain-point severity → the opportunity backlog. Service blueprint when backstage processes shape the experience (Shostack 1984).
  • Competitive experience audit: walk competitors' actual flows; document their conventions (Jakob's Law: their patterns are your users' expectations) and their pain (your openings).

Outcome roadmaps over feature roadmaps

  • An outcome is "a change in human behavior that drives business results" (Seiden, Outcomes Over Output): roadmap the behavior change ("new users reach first success in one session"), not the feature list — features are bets, outcomes are the goal they're bet on.
  • Torres's opportunity solution tree operationalizes this: desired outcome → opportunities (needs/pains from continuous interviews) → candidate solutions → assumption tests (see UX Research Methods).
  • Now/Next/Later horizon roadmaps (a ProdPad-popularized convention) fit outcome framing better than date-committed Gantt charts: certainty honestly decreases with distance.

Discovery anti-patterns (name them to fight them)

  • Feature factory (Cutler's term): success = shipping; no measurement of whether shipped things changed behavior; roadmap as a commitments list written before any discovery.
  • Discovery theater: research run to validate a decision already made; only confirming evidence reaches the deck.
  • HiPPO override: highest-paid person's opinion beats evidence because evidence was never made legible (tie insights to outcome metrics to fight this).
  • Personas/journeys invented in a workshop with no data; "we ARE the user"; one big annual research study instead of continuous contact; shipping the MVP and never returning to measure or iterate.

Design maturity models

  • NN/g UX-maturity model (2021, still published and maintained): six stages from Absent → Limited → Emergent → Structured → Integrated → User-Driven, assessed on strategy, culture, process, outcomes. Useful as a shared vocabulary for "where are we and what's the next organizational move," not as a scorecard to game.
  • InVision's 5-level model (The New Design Frontier, 2019) was widely cited but InVision shut down at the end of 2024 and no longer publishes it — treat it as historical reference only.

Measuring design ROI (honestly)

  • The McKinsey Design Index (The Business Value of Design, 2018; 300 companies) reported top-quartile design performers with ~32pp higher revenue growth and ~56pp higher shareholder-return growth. Cite it with its caveats: it is correlational (great companies may invest in design because they're great), the index methodology and significance testing were not disclosed, and it was published by a firm selling design consulting. Same class of caveat applies to vendor ROI studies generally.
  • The defensible route: instrument specific design work against specific outcome metrics — conversion/completion deltas from redesigns (A/B-tested where possible), support-contact and error-rate reductions, time-to-first-success, retention of affected cohorts — measured before/after with the method limits stated. Small honest numbers beat big borrowed ones.

Prioritization

Impact on user outcome × business value × confidence ÷ effort (RICE et al. are fine; the discipline matters more than the formula). Kano model (Kano 1984): classify features as basic (absence kills, presence unnoticed), performance (linear), delighter (nonlinear surprise) — basics first, always; delighters decay into basics over time.

Measuring strategy (see Usability Testing & UX Metrics)

Tie the vision to outcome metrics (task success, retention, NPS/SUS trends, support-ticket themes) — not output metrics (features shipped). Beware Goodhart's law: any single metric optimized in isolation gets gamed, usually at the user's expense.

Sources

  • Levy, J. (2015; 2nd ed. 2021). UX Strategy. O'Reilly.
  • Porter, M. (1985). Competitive Advantage; Kim & Mauborgne (2005). Blue Ocean Strategy. HBR Press.
  • Ries, E. (2011). The Lean Startup. Crown; Torres, T. (2021). Continuous Discovery Habits.
  • Seiden, J. (2019). Outcomes Over Output. Sense & Respond Press.
  • Cutler, J. (2016). "12 Signs You're Working in a Feature Factory" (widely republished essay).
  • Christensen, C. et al. (2016). "Know Your Customers' Jobs to Be Done." HBR; Ulwick, A. (2005). What Customers Want.
  • Kano, N. et al. (1984). "Attractive quality and must-be quality." Journal of the Japanese Society for Quality Control.
  • Cooper, A. (1999). The Inmates Are Running the Asylum — personas.
  • Shostack, G. L. (1984). "Designing services that deliver." HBR.
  • NN/g — "The 6 Levels of UX Maturity" (nngroup.com/articles/ux-maturity-model/).
  • McKinsey & Co. (2018). "The Business Value of Design" — correlational; methodology critiques exist (e.g., Mauro Usability Science).
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