User Experience Strategy (July 23, 2007)

http://semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/000179.php

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In recent years, my consulting process has become T-shaped, in part
due to the gentle jabs of Peter Boersma, but mostly as a result of the
fit between my expertise and the needs of my clients.

In the first phase, I conduct research (the three circles) and work
with my clients to define a user experience strategy. This narrative
expression provides a necessary but insufficient platform for design.

Figure 1. The T-Shaped Consulting Framework

In the second phase, I develop the information architecture, which
requires specifying the structure and behavior of a web site, software
product, or interactive service, so that users can achieve goals,
complete tasks, and find what they need.

And, it's this tangible expression of strategy, in the form of
wireframes, sketches, and prototypes, that reliably translates an
abstract vision into a well-grounded, actionable blueprint for design.
Without that structural foundation, the strategy just hangs in space.

Frame Analysis

But this article is not about information architecture. Rather, it's
an investigation of user experience strategy, a novel phrase that's
crept into our vocabulary and is shaping our future. Let me explain.

The words we use to describe or frame our roles, our teams, and
ourselves influence our own perceptions and the ways we are perceived
by others. As George Lakoff explains in Don't Think of an Elephant:

"Frames are mental structures that shape the way we see the world. As
a result, they shape the goals we seek, the plans we make, the way we
act, and what counts as a good or bad outcome of our actions...Because
language activates frames, new language is required for new frames.
Thinking differently requires speaking differently."

In other words, user experience strategy is a term whose time has
come, and while it leads us to better design, it also obscures our vision.

Don't Think of an Experience

As an information architect, I'm sensitive to the fact that quite
often the last thing users want is an experience. In many contexts,
usability and findability simply outweigh desirability. Users want to
find it, use it, and move on. The best experience is invisible.

In other contexts, we must beware the lure of end-to-end control
invoked by user experience design. As Mark Weiser forewarned,
seamlessness impedes invention. It's seamful design that affords
appropriation, co-creation, mashups, swarming, and other elegant hacks.

Of course, all terms have limits. Information architects must stay
social and be wary of infoprefixation. And, interaction designers must
heed the hyperbole that in design, interaction is the last resort. But
these dangers don't negate the real value that new terms deliver by
helping us to think and act differently in unfamiliar terrain.

From Design to Strategy

Jesse James Garrett famously defined user experience design in a great
diagram and an even better book:

"Businesses have now come to recognize that providing a quality user
experience is an essential, sustainable competitive advantage. It is
user experience that forms the customer's impression of the company's
offerings, it is user experience that differentiates the company from
its competitors, and it is user experience that determines whether
your customer will ever come back."

Similarly, Jakob Nielsen and Don Norman explain that user experience
design "encompasses all aspects of the end-user's interaction with the
company, its services, and its products." And, Nathan Shedroff
positions user experience design as "an approach to creating
successful experiences for people in any medium."

A great deal has been written about user experience design but only
recently has much ink been spilled on the subject of user experience
strategy. I suspect there are a couple of reasons for the new focus.
First, the elevated stature of user experience and design thinking in
the business world have opened doors in the executive suite. Designers
have a real opportunity to influence strategy. Second, we're nearing
an inflection point in an expanding set of markets, beyond which
traditional product design is rendered obsolete.

Experience Ecologies

As we're increasingly able to embed information and intelligence in
physical objects connected via ubiquitous wireless networks, such
concepts as open source, open APIs, mashups, co-creation, and
findability are rapidly and irrevocably escaping the confines of the Web.

Adam Greenfield encapsulates the ensuing erosion of distinctions
between "product" and "service" and the importance of "beautiful
seams" in On the Ground Running, a brilliant piece that explores and
eviscerates the iPod, Nike+, and Amtrak Acela ecologies.

Peter Merholz offers a valuable and complementary perspective in
Experience IS the Product, and his partner Jesse James Garret, in a
mesmerizing podcast on Experience Strategies, drives home the absolute
imperative of designing from the outside-in.

Jared Spool positions what's going on as a simple progression toward
market maturity from technology to features to experience to
integration. I'm sure Jared's right, but this framing misses the real
story. The way we conceptualize products, services, and brands is
changing. We can glimpse the destination in Bruce Sterling's spime and
Julian Bleecker's blogjects, but the journey has already begun, which
is why we're talking so much about user experience strategy.

Experience Executives

In the past, I've used the following quote to introduce the complex,
intimate relationship between strategy and tactics:

"In strategy, surprise becomes more feasible the closer it occurs to
the tactical realm." - Carl von Clausewitz, 1832

Good strategy requires awareness of the full range of possible
tactics. Richard Dalton captures this nicely in the Forces of User
Experience, though I'll never know why he chose a rainbow over a
honeycomb.

Figure 2. The User Experience Strategy Honeycomb

The key point is that within an increasing number of markets,
executives can no longer afford to formulate strategy without
embracing user experience, and to the extent their offerings include
web sites, software products, and interactive services, these leaders
(or their successors) must understand the complex interplay between
strategy, scope, structure, semantics, skeleton, and surface. They
must become experience executives, in concept if not in name.

It's About Futurity

As Michael Raynor explains in The Strategy Paradox, strategy and
futurity are inextricably bound together:

"Most strategies are built on specific beliefs about the future.
Unfortunately, the future is deeply unpredictable. Worse, the
requirements of breakthrough success demand implementing strategy in
ways that make it impossible to adapt should the future not turn out
as expected. The result is the Strategy Paradox: strategies with the
greatest possibility of success also have the greatest possibility of
failure. Resolving this paradox requires a new way of thinking about
strategy and uncertainty."

Raynor argues that to manage uncertainty, companies must build
scenarios of the future, and identify strategies and strategic options
for each possible future. I'd argue that those who develop user
experience strategy would do well to embrace this framing in futurity.

For while our work certainly supports incremental progress towards
better usability, findability, and credibility, user experience
methods are equally well-suited to disruptive innovation. In the deep
dives of design research, we gain insight into the latent needs of
users, and with our sketches, mental models, and prototypes we bring
greater richness and depth to the exploration of possible, probable,
and preferable futures.

In short, we are futurists.

So, what about that empty cell in the honeycomb? Well, like our
understanding of user experience strategy, the hive remains
unfinished. We don't have all the answers, at least not individually.

Perhaps we can fill in the gaps together, tomorrow.