26 May 2020 (updated: 16 July 2020)
Chapters
And why you should spare the time for UX strategy before your app’s development.
“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where–” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat."
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter 6
So you’ve decided to kickstart your very own digital product or the project you’ve worked so hard on has finally got a green light at your company. No matter which one it is, no matter the industry or the environment you’re working in, one thing stays the same: you need a solid plan.
Without a clear sense of direction, to quote the Alice-in-Wonderland’s Cat: it doesn’t really matter which way you go. And you don’t want a product that’s going nowhere.
A solid plan is a way to make sure the Cat’s advice won’t apply to you. And by a plan we actually mean a conscious design process guiding us (together) through every decision and with a defined goal above our heads, so we’re sure we stay on the right path.
This is you how you invalidate Alice-in-Wonderland-Cat’s advice, ladies and gentlemen.
“To build or not to build?” Or rather: WHAT & HOW to build should be the question!
You may ask — “Why bother? I do already have a strategy”.
Many digital product investors are eager to start the journey as soon as possible: they rush to see the first tangible results and keep it going forward. They decide to start with visual design, or even farther: move straight to the development, skipping the strategy phase entirely. But there are two things you ought to remember.
Software is much easier than, let’s say, real estate development. Before the construction company starts their work the only thing you can see is their plans and sketches. And without a somewhat vivid imagination, it might be difficult to picture the final effect.
When developing a digital product, we can prepare a mockup or a clickable prototype that shows you our concept and quickly make changes in case we depart from your original concept.
Iteratively agreeing on former steps does not only make the next steps easier but it also makes the development cheaper.
Changes in code are more time-consuming, so to put it bluntly: just more expensive.
These three steps, incorporated in each and every project, ensure that at the end of the day, you will reach the goal and the destination of creating a meaningful digital product.
“UX strategy is the process that should be started first, before the design or development of a digital product begins. It’s the vision of a solution that needs to be validated with real potential customers to prove that it’s desired in the marketplace. (…) UX strategy is the “Big Picture.” It is the high-level plan to achieve one or more business goals under conditions of uncertainty.
Jaime Levy
There are two elementary requirements we make sure your product will meet:
If we only have one process to fit all, one may ask, how can we cope with all those different business models and project stages?
Well, although the process is one, the methods we use vary depending exactly on the elements mentioned above.
As Jeff Bezos once put it — „We are stubborn on vision. We are flexible on details”.
For the UX Strategy phase, to make sure we will be designing the right thing, we will take you through the following steps using all the data you have already collected (about the market, about your users, about the organization system that will work in the background):
A Product Design Workshop is a checkpoint that will helps us close the UX Strategy phase and summarize and organize the findings before we go further.
During a Workshop, we all sit together to organize the data we gathered (the data you collected, the data we discovered for you).
We convert it all into actionable points: a product roadmap and the effort and impact map. These elements help us (you and our team) organize priorities for the next phase.
A Workshop can verify if you’re ready to take next steps with your idea. In our history, we’ve encountered projects that decided to fill in the blanks in their business canvas before going further.
If you’re interested to know the value behind a Workshop check out this short Workshop benefits round-up written by our Senior UX Designer, Michał Mazur.
UX Strategy phase is not a random walk in the park and it should end with tangible deliverables for your business.
We understand for whom we’ll building your product, we share the same goals and know the most important success metrics as well as possible technological limitations.
We know where we’re headed. The Cat has nothing on us now.
And this journey is to be continued: expect a second part explaining our UX design phase soon!
21 November 2024 • Mariusz Heyda