How to enjoy your work more by thinking strategically about UX/CX activities and planning.

1. CX / UX Strategy
Driving Innovation & Making our Work Meaningful
Cassandra Moore, PhD UXPA DC July 21, 2016

2. Agenda
• What makes work meaningful?
• Strategic thinking is unnatural
• How to think strategically
• Business strategy
• Experience strategy

3. Satisfying Work
• Sense of agency, influence
• Involvement in something
aspirational
• Finding meaning
• Flow?
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4. STRATEGIC THINKING

5. Defining Terms (for this talk)
• Goals – what you want to achieve
• Strategy – plan for achieving goals
• Tactics – specific activities
• Organizations have purpose, goals
– Business
– Govt agency
– Association
– Non-profit
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6. Descriptive of Strategy?
Yes
• Rationality
• Logic
• Goals
• Intentionality
• Reasoning
Not so much
• Intuition
• Emotion
• Bias
• Good enough
• Quick
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7. Myth of the Rational Agent
Choices based on
• All available information
• Probabilities of events
• Potential costs & benefits
Always maximizes utility in
his own interest
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8. Strategic Thought is not Natural
• Conclusions on few
facts
• Certain we’re right
• Dismiss inconsistent
evidence
• Use heuristics
• Overgeneralize, exhibit
bias
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9. Who we think we are Who we really are
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It’s Counterintuitive…

10. • Automatic, effortless, quick
• Largely unconscious,
difficult/impossible to control
• Intuition, expertise, skill
• Does most of the work of thinking
• Controlled, effortful, slow
• Usually conscious
• Logically coherent, rule-governed
• Lazy
• Easily overwhelmed
Two Systems of Thinking
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System 1 System 2
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11. Thinking is Hard
• Persuasion, sales,
voting, even behavior
change, appeals to
emotions and values
• It works because our
everyday thought is
based on heuristics,
intuitions, emotions
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12. STRATEGIC THINKING HOW-TO

13. Algorithms Engage System 2
• Use algorithms
• Explicit consideration
of each component of
a decision
• Leads to more rational
choices
• Important to choose
the right criteria
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14. Surgical Checklist
• Surgery has become so
complicated, expert
surgeons can forget a step
• Expertise is not enough. It
relies on System 1
• Checklists reduce medical
errors dramatically
• Slows the team, engages
System 2
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15. Checklist for Regulatory Impact Analysis
• Changing Federal Regulations
has broad impact, huge cost if
incorrect or incomplete
• Instituted by Cass Sunstein
(Harvard Law faculty) in the
Obama administration
• Requires evidentiary support,
explicit reflection, and reason-
giving
• Provides criteria for deciding
what to do, what NOT to do
RIA (Sample of Questions)
Does the RIA include a reasonably detailed description of
the need for the regulatory action?
Does the RIA include an explanation of how the
regulatory action will meet that need?
Does the RIA use an appropriate baseline?
Is the information in the RIA based on the best
reasonably obtainable scientific, technical, and
economic information and is it presented in an accurate,
clear, complete, and unbiased manner?
Does the RIA explain and support a reasoned
determination that the benefits of the intended
regulation justify its costs (recognizing that some
benefits and costs are difficult to quantify)?
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16. Strategy
Before creating an Experience Strategy, we need
the right criteria for deciding what to do. Criteria
are supplied by business goals.
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17. BUSINESS STRATEGY

18. Seek to Understand the Organization
• Approach with curiosity
– What are their goals? Challenges?
– What do they offer to customers?
– What is the value proposition?
– How do they want the customer to interact with
them?
– How do they differentiate themselves from
organizations with similar offerings?
@Seymour188

19. Business Strategy ala Michael Porter
A collection of activities that an organization chooses to
undertake to deliver a series of (positive, exceptional)
interactions which, when taken together, constitute an (product
or service) offering that is superior in some meaningful, hard-to-
replicate way; that is unique, distinct & distinguishable from that
available from a competitor.
• Replace “is” with “the customer believes”. Knowing what the
customer thinks is the critical support for the whole strategy
• Many products, e.g., Internet service, cable, are essentially
the same. The differentiator can be customer experience
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20. The Elusive Business Strategy
• Most organizations don’t have an explicit strategy
(please write if you find one!)
• Org strategies are very difficult to write and to agree
upon. Efforts are often abandoned mid-stream
• Usually, you will be hunting for clues about the
implicit goals of the organization
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21. Hunting for Org (Business) Strategy
• At the organizational level look for
– Vision or mission statements
– ‘About Us’ description
– C-level newsletters, speeches, blogs
– Articles about the organization or their mandate
• At the department level look for
– Department goals, KPIs, success measures
– RFP, proposals for the project
– Vision & scope of project
– Business requirements
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22. Make Straw Man Goals
• Evaluate the evidence gathered
• Get input from team members
with different perspectives
– Developers, designers, project
managers
• Make a prioritized list of
organizational goals
• Think about which problem or
opportunity each goal addresses
• Be willing to be wrong
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23. Verify the List with Stakeholders
• Ask stakeholders to evaluate the straw man
– Do they agree with the goals?
– Do they agree with the prioritization?
– Have we left anything out?
– Are there constrains or challenges we haven’t
considered?
• Simply asking “what are your goals?” invites
use of the Homer system.
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24. Listen with Empathy
• Try to understand stakeholder’s perspective
• Take note of any challenges or dismissals
(we can’t do that because…)
• Remember who is concerned about what
• Note assumptions and opinions about
customer behavior (and test them later)
• Consider making a list of stakeholders with
notes about their concerns
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25. Revise the Goals List
• Review stakeholder input, note agreement level
• Have problems or opportunities been overlooked?
• Which are short-term vs. long-term goals?
• Consider the broader technology landscape
– Are they missing anything, e.g., a CMS or CRM?
– Are the solutions they’re considering future friendly?
• Goals provide criteria for selecting UX activities
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26. CREATING AN EXPERIENCE STRATEGY

27. Thinking about an Experience Strategy
• How can UX help achieve the
business goals?
• What activities will provide
data/evidence?
• Which goal does each UX activity
address?
• How does the activity contribute to
the goal?
• Is the activity the most efficient
way of reaching the goal?
• If it doesn’t contribute in a
meaningful way, don’t do it
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28. Planning for the Future
@Seymour188
• Strategic plans should look to the future
• Some problems can be solved now, but others
must wait (equipment, time, budget, etc.)
• What are the future challenges likely to be?
• Are today’s solutions readying the
organization to meet future challenges?
cassandramoorephd

29. Formulating the Experience Strategy
• A plan of activities on a timeline
• What each activity will
accomplish – data, evidence
• Why the accomplishment is
important – reason-giving
• How you will measure outcomes
– Contribution to the customer
experience
– Contribution to achieving business
goals
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30. Communicating the Strategy
• Talk to Homer, not Spock
– Keep it simple
– Connect on an emotional level
– Reference values
– Make it fun
– Tell a story
• Assume people skim text and
look at pictures
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31. Communication Tools
• Discuss the plan with your team
– Dev, PM, content strategists, product owners, etc.
– Be flexible. Remember, it’s a team effort!
• Make a poster, put it on the wall
– Stakeholders see what you’re doing and when
– Promotes a user-centric mindset
– Provides a context for the customer story you’ll
tell with personas, journey maps, sketches
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32. Circling Back to Business Strategy
@Seymour188
• User research provides the foundation for an
evidence-based strategy
• User research can legitimize the value
proposition
• Communication of the findings is crucial
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33. What can you do right now?
@Seymour188
• Understand the organization, its goals and
challenges
• Look for problems, pain points
• Offer solutions that align with business goals
and make the connection explicit
cassandramoorephd

34. THANK YOU!
FIN
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Presentation at slideshare.net/SeymourInfoArchitect/ux-strategy-64254598
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@Seymour188 on Twitter
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