UX Strategy: Definition and Components

Summary: A UX strategy is a 3-part plan that fosters shared understanding of direction toward achieving goals before designing and implementing solutions. It serves to intentionally guide the prioritization and execution of UX work over time.

To inform our research on vision and strategy in UX, we surveyed 30 UX professionals in a variety of roles, to learn about the challenges they face in setting direction and planning the execution of mid- to long-term user-experience work. Thematic analysis of the responses revealed the following common issues:

UX practitioners often prioritize mastering practical skills such as UI design, prototyping and wireframing, journey mapping , running user research , and reporting findings . While these skills are important, in order for UX to lead and influence at a higher level, practitioners must also grow their strategic skills. Many practitioners’ strategic skills aren’t as strong as their practical skills, as they involve triangulating many inputs and sources of information to create a high-level plan for an improved user experience.

In this article, we’ll define what a user-experience strategy is, its components, and the risks of having no strategy at all. A companion article will discuss how to create a UX strategy.