On strategy
Apr 8th, 2008 by Aaron Louie
I’ve been realizing more and more that the crucial role user experience architects play in the software and web design process is that of a strategist. So I started reading up on strategy.
What I found is that, contrary to the paper-thin plots in movies, strategic planning does not happen in a subterranean room filled with maps of the world and scale models of ships. It doesn’t happen in the mind of a genius admiral at the helm of a battleship. More likely, strategy happens in a well-facilitated brainstorming session after everyone in the room has gathered and examined as much information as possible. Strategy is what you get after thorough research and analysis and testing and refinement. A strategic plan is a blueprint for achieving a set of goals.
Sounds similar to the user-centered design process, right? I have a sneaking suspicion that we are on the verge of a shift in the IA/UX discipline toward the strategic planning end of the customer engagement.
We cannot simply focus on drawing well-structured diagrams, creating fancy deliverables, and conducting well-designed user studies. These are the tools of our craft, but they are merely tactics for communicating, visualizing, and extracting the information needed to make strategic decisions. When our clients and business decision makers can follow the thread of user objectives and high-level business goals down to the smallest detail of a wireframe, we will have done our job as strategists.