“People who do strategy need to be inquisitive, objective and fearless.”

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What made me read this book?

The world and language of User Experience is relatively young; as a result, there isn’t yet wide consensus as to what terms mean across industries. Time and time again, I’ve witnessed discussions about the difference between two similar terms. A key example of this occurs with role titles and job postings. Often times a company will call their designers “Product Designer” while another company will call their designers “UX Designers.”

This difference in language ought to warrant a difference in responsibilities in roles (at least in this example), but often times it doesn’t. Upon listening to thought leaders talk about this exact terminology difference (product designer vs. UX designer lingo), it became clear that, in theory, Product Designers have more varying responsibilities and it could be implied they have strategy experience.

In order to learn more about what ‘UX Strategy’ is, I decided to give Jaime Levy’s book a read.

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What is UX Strategy?

Simply put, UX Strategy is: the intersection of UX Design and business strategy.

The formula, stated by Jaime Levy, is:

UX Strategy = Business Strategy + Value Innovation + Validated User Research + Frictionless UX

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Thoughts on the book

This book seems to be targeted more toward managerial positions rather than individual contributors; as a result, there wasn’t much in the book that was entirely new content from my perspective. I enjoyed hearing Jaime talk about the ‘birth’ of products and the importance of validated user research. From a zoomed out level, she states

“To be competitive, you need to know what’s out there, what has worked, and what has not worked.”

As designers, we know this to be true. This is often a discussion that takes place with non-design stakeholders: probably the target audience of this book. She also states:

“The business must continually identify and utilize a competitive advantage.”

This makes the justification for continuous iteration and therefore having an in-house product team comprised of researchers, designers, and strategists. If you’re trying to get buy-in, then this book is amazing. Additionally, if you’re newer to UX entirely, this book would also be amazing. All in all, I enjoyed the read.