Repositioning User Experience as a Strategic Process

Overview

While user experience managers have diverse backgrounds, many lack formal training in management or strategic planning. This workshop fills the void by exploring an important topic: how to better align usability goals within the context of an organisation's business strategy.

Referencing work by business gurus like Drucker, Christensen, and Grove, the workshop shows how management science and business strategy is relevant to user experience practitioners. The workshop covers the operational, organisational, and strategic aspects that user experience groups can and should impact within product development companies. Each topic area is discussed in depth, including case studies as examples, and followed by a group exercise where participants have an opportunity to apply the concepts to a problem faced by their own company.

Delegates work on creating a presentation aimed at the senior management of their company. Delegates vote to identify the best of these presentations, which is then delivered to all attendees.

Printable pdf course description for this seminar

This seminar is aimed at

This course is for you if you are a manager or advocate charged with championing user-centred design processes. The workshop will also be of interest to product or engineering managers who have a solid understanding of best practices and want to promote user-centred design in their organisation. Attendees should have experience with, or knowledge of, usability testing, gathering UI requirements, and UI design related activities. Some experience with managing or leading teams responsible for user experience activities would be beneficial but is not required. Workshop examples will primarily draw from software development contexts, but the material covered is broadly applicable to user experience initiatives in any product development oriented business.

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You will learn how to

• Understand the difference between operational, tactical, and strategic activities.
• Identify hidden benefits associated with user experience efforts within your own company and how to communicate those benefits more effectively.
• Understand how three key factors in organisations (resources, processes, and values) impact product designs.
• Gain hands on experience with techniques to help prioritise work and identify ways of more effectively engaging other organisations in your company for maximum impact and visibility.
• Learn about strategic inflection points and how user experience is in a unique position to help organisations survive these situations.
• Practice articulating the rationale for user experience as a must-have competence for every product development initiative using business terminology.

What will I learn?

Operational Focus

• Achieving operational excellence: strategies for delivering user experience work in rapid, medium, and long-term product development cycles
• Syndicate activity: Analysing operational outputs, costs, and value-add

Organisational Focus

• Developing a broad organisational focus: Value networks and technology brokers
• Syndicate activity: Collaborating for greater impact and success

Strategic Focus

• Integrating user experience into strategic initiatives: Corporate strategic initiatives in high tech companies.

Putting It all Together: A Recipe for Success

• Preparing for strategic rollout: Leveraging core competencies to achieve strategic corporate goals
• Syndicate activity: Strategic Rollout Part 1: Creating a high-level, 5-minute presentation
• Syndicate activity: Strategic Rollout Part 2: Presenting your plan
• Pitching your vision: Feedback and critique

Summary and Wrap-Up

• Brief review of the key topics
• Final opportunity for questions

Duration

This course lasts one day.

About your trainer

This seminar is led by Jon Innes and Liam Friedland who between them have over 35 years experience in the field of user centred design.

Course Schedule

There are no scheduled dates for this course. If you want us to run this seminar as a public course, click on the button below. Once we get 8 like-minded individuals we'll organise a public course and let you know.

In-house training

We can bring this course to you and run it for a fixed fee no matter where you are. Prices from £150/delegate + VAT (assuming 12 delegates).