UX Strategy Guide

Smashy Design
5 min readSep 9, 2023

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The UX strategy guide serves as the last stop on our quest to fully understand UX design strategies. If you missed any of our previous content (What is UX Strategy & UX Blueprint), you can always go back and read it before heading back to grasp the concept of UX strategy.

As a company that employs designers, we use the UX strategy Guide to help them understand and implement both the Lean UX Canvas and the UX Strategy Blueprint, as well as provide additional information to help them make the final decisions.

This guide supports the research of challenges, audiences, concepts, hypotheses, risk analysis, and product decision-making.

The UX strategy guide comprises twelve stages that are grouped into five categories and must be completed. However, additional adjustments are required until the final sector is finalized, as well as a decision on whether to proceed with the intended product.

First category (steps 1–5)

Understanding the problem and expectations

It relates to understanding the problem, what is expected to be resolved, what difficulties must be faced, differences in current solutions, and how to estimate project success.

The more information gathered, the easier it will be to generate solution ideas, identify possible users and advantages, and minimize risk.

The majority of information may be gained from the product manager — or, if the firm is tiny, the owner.

As with all earlier parts of the guide, proceed to the next category if you have all of the answers above and have completed your research. You may not believe it, but following steps 2 and 3 may save many projects from failure.

  • Problem — What businesses/problems have you found that require support?
  • Outcomes — What changes in consumer behavior will show that you have solved a genuine problem in a way that delivers value to your customers?
  • Challenges — What obstacles will you confront in the future? Who are your key competitors?
  • Differentiators — How will your product vary from existing comparable solutions? How will you overcome the obstacles?
  • Measurement — How do you measure success? What is the time period for your primary goal?

Second category (steps 6–7)

Understanding the real users of the product and the benefits

We’re writing about an issue that we feel exists in this category. When a product already exists, it is usual practice to outline the difficulties that the solution faces. The goal here is to first identify the issue and then work on a solution.

It is about knowing the actual consumers of the product and the benefits they anticipate from utilizing it.

  • Customers and users — What kinds of users and customers should you prioritize first? What are their demographics, gender, and age?
  • User benefits — What are the objectives of your users? What makes people want to find your solution?

Third category (step 8)

Solution ideas

Lists the features, improvements, and general concepts that will assist your target audience in achieving the benefits they desire.

It is a place to keep track of all suggestions for features that are relevant to the information gathered in the previous phases. It’s always fascinating to learn that “the perfect idea” does not make sense to the user or the business.

Fourth category (steps 9–11)

Raise assumptions about features that are beneficial to both users and the corporation

We also consider the most critical threats and how to assess their likelihood.

In brief, any hypothesis identified with a low risk is added to the backlog of activities to be completed by the design and development teams. High-risk hypotheses are either rejected or preserved in the guide for future iterations.

  • Hypotheses — Combine the assumptions from 2–8 in the template hypothesis statement below.
  • Riskiest assumptions — Identify the riskiest assumption for each hypothesis. This is the assumption that, if incorrect, will cause the entire notion to fail.
  • Risk management experiments — Consider what kinds of experiments you might do to determine if your riskiest assumption is correct or incorrect.

Fifth Category (step 12)

Go or No Go

As designers, we like manipulating pixels and imagining screen interactions. When all of the questions in step 12 are answered ‘YES’, we may begin prototyping.

One (or more) ‘NO’ responses indicate a lack of necessary data for decision-making. Moving forward increases the likelihood of rework. After all, it’s preferable to do another iteration by addressing what’s missing rather than beginning a design that will be amended or abandoned later.

UX strategy is a topic that demands research, patience, and attention. It entails numerous design disciplines as well as tight collaboration with other departments within the organization, particularly product management and marketing. As a result, knowing and profiting from this information adds enormous value to our ideas.

The UX Strategy Guide is a resource that may assist you in better understanding your company, audience, and market. Feel free to change it to meet your specific requirements.

We strive to deliver the finest service possible to our clients, hence, the UX strategy guide is one of the final elements in our company’s UX strategy process.

If you would like to stay up to date on all of our posted content, don’t forget to follow us on our socials and as for inquiries reach us at hello@smashydesign.com

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Smashy Design
Smashy Design

Written by Smashy Design

Passionate in building digital solutions for Creative Agencies & Medium sized enterprises

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