Deep Dive into UX Vision and UX Strategy What is the Current State of UX Vision and UX Strategy?

Positive experiences have a significant economical value, and many organisations invest in positive customer experiences (CX) and corresponding CX strategies (Köninger & Gouthier, 2024). But we know remarkably little about the similar topic of UX strategy and how it is implemented in practice. So our UX strategy working group (German UPA) conducted a study to investigate the current state (“status quo”) of UX vision and UX strategy. Specifically, we created a survey (64 respondents) and conducted interviews (11 participants) with UX professionals in the German-speaking community. In this article, my aim is to cover the main results.

Main results: UX strategy is rising, but not yet fully established

How frequent are UX visions and UX strategies?

About half of the respondents in our survey have a UX strategy established. Typical barriers included not being able to convince management that the organisation needs a UX strategy, insufficient time for strategic work, or unclear benefits. Interestingly, although UX vision (How do we envision the experience for our users?) and UX strategy (How do we get there?) are closely related, the do not always co-exist.

Which aspects do UX visions and UX strategies cover?

Supporting earlier work, UX visions and UX strategies can cover a lot of different aspects, and often several aspects at once:

• They often address digital products and services, where they outline how the experience of a user interacting with the product or service should feel (and how this aligns with business objectives).
• They can also be transversal across a whole family of products and services, where they aim to create a similar experience (in line with the brand of an organisation) independent of which product or service is used.
• They can focus on UX teams, where they define processes, tools, and other details of UX work, but also the collaboration with other teams.
• They can also address entire organisations, where they support business objectives with human-centered design and research activities, and often aim to transform the organisation towards being more human-centered.

How are UX visions and UX strategies created, implemented, and measured?

Through our survey and qualitative interviews, we gathered a lot of insights into strategic UX work in practice:

• It is mainly internal UX staff and their management who push the establishment of UX strategy, rarely C-level management.
• Work on UX strategy is highly collaborative, often ranging across multiple departments.
• UX strategy needs constant measurement to understand where the organisation currently stands and whether it moves in the right direction. This includes the UX of products and services, the organisation’s UX maturity, but also the impact of the UX strategy.

What should management do about UX strategy?

Our conversations revealed that UX professionals request UX strategy as a guiding light for their work. However, organisations often view UX much more operationally and rarely support the strategic impact that it can have. This is a frequent source of frustration for UX professionals. Managers need to be aware of these feelings and support the strategic aspirations of their employees. On the other hand, UX professionals also need to align their work with business objectives and demonstrate the value of their work for what the organisation wants to achieve. Building alliances with other teams is a vital step for establishing this strategic approach to UX.

Conclusion

Based on a combination of quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews, our study established the current state of UX visions and UX strategies in the German-speaking UX industry. A big shout-out goes out to my co-author Julia and the entire team of the UX strategy working group: Without your support, none of this would have been possible.

The paper is available for download (open access) at the Digital Libary of the GI (Gesellschaft für Informatik) and received an Honorable Mention: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3743049.3743058