UX Strategy: Product Strategy Techniques for Devising Innovative Digital Solutions

302 Pages·2021·36.93 MB·English

by  Jaime Levy

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Product Strategy Techniques for
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Jaime Levy

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“If you want to learn how to build products that people want and
need, this book is a must read. UX Strategy covers what to do before
designing and coding—market research, validating business ideas,
prototyping, user research, and more.”
STEVE BLANK, COCREATOR OF THE LEAN STARTUP,
FATHER OF MODERN ENTREPRENEURSHIP
“Jaime Levy’s UX Strategy was a landmark book in the field of UX
when it came out—a must-have in anyone’s library. And now as
the field itself evolves and matures, it’s thrilling to see her updated
perspective on UX strategy in this second edition. This is the type of
book that gets better and better each time you dive in, and now with
updated content, there’s a wealth of new material to absorb. Clear,
practical, and from the heart: UX Strategy continues to deliver on
its promise of guiding strategy for digital products in a modern era.”
JIM KALBACH, CHIEF EVANGELIST AT MURAL AND AUTHOR OF
MAPPING EXPERIENCES AND THE JOBS TO BE DONE PLAYBOOK
“Life’s too short to design an amazing UX for something that nobody
wants. Save your time and resources by first practicing the lean
strategy techniques advocated in this book.”
ASH MAURYA, AUTHOR OF RUNNING LEAN
AND CREATOR OF THE LEAN CANVAS
“Designers are always looking for a way to have more impact with
their work. Jaime’s book is a foolproof guide for leveling up your
existing skills to inform product strategy.”
ANDY BUDD, DESIGN FOUNDER, SPEAKER, ADVISOR, AND COACH
“Stuffed full of best practices from leading thinkers across a range of
disciplines, Jaime Levy’s UX Strategy is essentially an MBA-in-a-book
for any designer. Her own stories and guidance make for a friendly and
personable read.”
STEVE PORTIGAL, USER RESEARCH CONSULTANT
AND AUTHOR, INTERVIEWING USERS AND
DOORBELLS, DANGER, AND DEAD BATTERIES
“Jaime Levy provides an easy-to-follow, no-nonsense, pragmatic, step-by-step
guide on how to develop and test innovative digital product ideas and value
propositions in a lean and efficient way. Full of tips and tricks, detailed
explanations, and very tangible advice—in short, a great, engaging guide
for all budding entrepreneurs, POs, UX designers, and others setting out in
human-centered product development.”
SVENJA VON HOLT, PRODUCT STRATEGY CONSULTANT AND
DIRECTOR OF INNOVATION STRATEGY, PORT BLUE SKY (BERLIN)
“This followup to the earlier edition further connects the theory of user
experience strategy with a practical, hands-on, business-savvy approach.
It provides both the strategy and tactics needed to create products and
services that can not only shine, but continue to grow. A must read
for any product designer, project manager, entrepreneur, or any other
innovative technologist.”
PAUL LUMSDAINE, UX DESIGNER AT NASA
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
“Jaime Levy’s view on the strategic role of product design helped us to
transform the curriculum within our design department. My students love
her book because she teaches them in her unique punk rock way how they
can make a big impact as creatives.”
PROFESSOR RETO WETTACH, UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCES
POTSDAM, SERVICE DESIGNER AND DESIGN STRATEGY CONSULTANT
“No microinteraction is going to save your product from a bad UX strategy.
Read Jaime’s book so that you’re first designing the right thing, then worry
about designing it right.”
DAN SAFFER, AUTHOR OF MICROINTERACTIONS
AND DESIGNING FOR INTERACTION
“Jaime executed breakthrough UX long before it was called UX. Read this
book and learn how to get out of your customers’ way, and create value for
everyone who touches your stuff!”
DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF, MEDIA THEORIST, AUTHOR
AND HOST OF TEAM HUMAN, AUTHOR OF PRESENT
SHOCK AND PROGRAM TO BE PROGRAMMED
“UX Strategy provides a templated approach for gaining strategic alignment,
which helped my team at Boeing to dial in on the source of business problems
and the opportunity landscape. By meeting the business upstream, we started
to build cross-functional trust and found the footing to connect customer
goals and outcomes to higher-level business objectives.”
ANDREW WILBUR, PRODUCT DESIGN LEAD, THE BOEING COMPANY

Second Edition
UX Strategy
Product Strategy Techniques for
Devising Innovative Digital Solutions
Jaime Levy
Beijing Boston Farnham Sebastopol Tokyo
UX Strategy
by Jaime Levy
Copyright © 2021 Jaime Levy. All rights reserved.
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May 2015: First Edition
March 2021: Second Edition
Revision History for the Second Edition:
2021-02-23 First Release
2021-07-23 Second Release
See https://www.oreilly.com/catalog/errata.
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The O’Reilly logo is a registered trademark of O’Reilly Media, Inc. UX Strategy,
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978-1-492-05243-2
[TI]
[ contents ]
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Chapter 1 What Is UX Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
The Evolution of the Term UX Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Chapter 2 The Four Tenets of UX Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
How I Discovered My UX Strategy Framework . . . . . . . . . 9
Tenet 1: Business Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Tenet 2: Value Innovation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Tenet 3: Validated User Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Tenet 4: Frictionless UX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Recap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Chapter 3 Defining the Initial Value Proposition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
The Blockbuster Value Proposition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
What Is a Value Proposition? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
If You Don’t Want to Live in a Fantasy World . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Recap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Chapter 4 Conducting Competitive Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Learning Lessons, the Hard Way . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Looking at the Competition to Uncover Nuggets . . . . . . 75
Understanding the Meaning of Competition . . . . . . . . . . 78
Researching All of the Competitive Data Points . . . . . . . 87
Recap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
vii
Chapter 5 Analyzing the Competition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
The Blockbuster Value Proposition, Part 2 . . . . . . . . . . . 110
What Is an Analysis? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
It Is Time to Take a Stand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
Recap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
Chapter 6 Storyboarding Value Innovation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
Timing Really Is Everything . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
Techniques for Value Innovation Discovery . . . . . . . . . . 150
Business Models, Value Innovation, and Online
Dating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Recap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
Chapter 7 Creating Prototypes for Experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Giving It Your Best Shot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
How I Became an Experiment Addict . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Defining Experiments Today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .179
Rapid Prototyping for Value Proposition Validation . . 182
Recap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Chapter 8 Conducting Online User Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
March 2020 Timeline: Coping with Insanity . . . . . . . . . 196
User Research Primer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
The Three Main Phases of Online User Research . . . . 201
Recap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
Chapter 9 Designing for Conversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
Funnel Business . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
Growth Hacking, Growth Design, and the
Hook Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
Conducting Landing Page Experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
Recap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
Chapter 10 Denouement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
Appendix: References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
viii  |   CONTENTS