So, how do you craft your UX strategy plan? First of all, make sure you're building the business case. This is a mistake that a lot of people make. Make sure that you're clear about what your ROI is and what it *can* be, right? What are you currently getting from your UX efforts, or *lack* of efforts? Even if you're measuring Google Analytics, what are the KPIs that are relevant to *your* user experience?
And then, what *should* they be or what *can* they be? And you may need to define these as you're starting to build your practice if you're new to UX and you're just getting started. But think about what that is and make sure you define that as you go along. Don't get too excited and just start doing user testing or start doing some type of UX activity and then forget about this. You know, it's really important to remember, remember, remember. Cost-benefits analysis, as we talked about, can be helpful, but *create a template*
and *a practice for costing* so that you're requiring that as part of your project plan. We start all our projects at Experience Dynamics with *business objectives*. So, we're laying that out so we understand what we're building the UX on top of. It's important to *identify your KPIs* (your key performance indicators). *Start with small measurements*; so, don't try and boil the ocean, but start with a few small metrics to measure
– things like success rate in usability testing – as a way to kind of start gauging where you are. Success rate is the main metric from usability testing, so it makes sense that you would measure that and track that. And then, make sure to *share and review those metrics monthly*, at least. It's so important to keep your eye on the metrics, to socialize them and make sure that they get out to people who need to hear about them. So, to start with your UX strategy, you want to *map your current state*.
So, create an *assessment* of your usability and your UX practices and methods. You know – What are you doing? What are you calling UX? And that means taking a look at your product Iifecycle, your management, your staffing attributes and, of course, your UX maturity rating, which is something that you can get from a scorecard I'll be sharing with you soon. So, UX readiness and agile experience are also important to measure in terms of usability and
the UX resources that you currently leverage and the techniques, you know. Essentially you're trying to figure out how things are *done today*. So, this is a current state. How are things happening from a process map? And then, from that – and so, what's important about that is that you get the picture of where your organization "is at". This is not about forcing your organization to act in a way that I want you to act in or that – you know – some guru or some book or some video or something or some voice of Forrester or a voice of Gartner analyst group.
It's not about that – it's about what works for *your* organization. So, a *UX maturity roadmap* is what you're going to end up with. It's going to have detailed guidelines for how to grow your UX competency. And it's going to have things like staffing positions or roles that are required, specific requirements for, again, *your* organization exactly, not somebody else's, and not the organization that you worked at *before* you came here. Don't try and bring that culture over to the organization you're in. It's *so* important that it's *custom-fit* to the
conditions, to the vibrations, if you will, to the frequency of your organization. because every organization is different. It is shaped by the founder, the CEO, the senior managers, the shareholders, the industry – the specific industry, the niche that you're in. So, *UX organization next steps and action plan* are going to be what you create in this ideal state
– so, where you're marching to, where you're going, essentially.