Strategic User Experience: Beyond the Interface

Strategy

Familiar with the expression 'lipstick on a pig'?

There comes a time in every UXer's career when they realise in order to really impact their Users' Experience they need to move beyond the interface and into the business.

For most of us, the prospect of taking a seat at the strategy table is an exciting yet terrifying prospect and requires a whole other set of skills, techniques and vocabulary.

What does it mean to get involved with Strategic User Experience?

• Understanding the experience that your users have beyond their interaction with the interface you're designing, across all medium, throughout the lifecycle of their engagement.
• Being proactively involved in shaping the product or service offering, working with disciplines across the organisation.
• Becoming fluent in the languages and practices of both User Experience & Business people, becoming a translator and facilitator for both of these groups.
• Developing some new techniques, and re-framing some existing UX techniques to help explore and communicate the strategic business opportunities that can be generated through a better understanding of our customers/end users.

UX practitioners with a few years experience under their belt who want to have more control over and input into the product or service they're working on.

• How to get their attention and speak their language (getting onto the strategy radar)
• What is an Experience Strategy - what does it include, how to make and use one.
• Soft skills you'll need as a UX Strategist.
• How to transform traditional UX deliverables from tactical to strategic tools.