Experience Strategy Is an Emerging Branch of UX

Here’s some exciting news! A new branch of UX is emerging. I call it experience strategy.

Experience strategy is an executive-level approach to UX. Experience strategists integrate their organization’s critical objectives with the delivery of great user experiences.

I’m excited to see this new branch coming into its own. I think we’re long overdue for a significant change like this, and it’s encouraging to meet new experience strategists. I’ve met many over the last few years, and it’s making me very optimistic for the future of UX.

Experience strategists make it their job to answer the question: How would improving the lives of our customers, users, and employees advance the achievement of my organization’s top priorities and goals? 

I don’t see anyone else asking this question, despite its importance. UX folks are precisely the right people to ask it. Since the dawn of UX, many folks have had the ear of senior executives, but now it is different.

What Experience Strategists Do

Today’s experience strategists make a direct connection between increased user value and top business objectives. Their work attracts the attention of their senior stakeholders and executives. The executives see how they boost their own success by making serious investments in better UX, which, in turn, strengthens the organization’s industry-leading position by delivering innovative products and services.

Here’s the thing: you can look all you want, but you won’t find anyone with the title of “experience strategist.” It’s just a label I made up to describe the people currently doing this work. Yet, these folks definitely exist.

They often still go by conventional UX titles of senior designer or researcher, or maybe they have titles that say they are a lead, staff, or principal. Some titles may even include the word strategist.

Yet, whatever they call themselves, they’re doing experience strategy work. Unlike others in the UX field, this work is at the highest levels of the organization, on the most critical priorities.

The experience strategists I have met work collaboratively, orchestrating the entire organization to make significant improvements in the lives of customers, users, and the associates who support them. This work differs from that of other branches of UX, such as designers, researchers, and content specialists, which usually focus on incremental improvements to the organization’s products and services.

Experience Strategists Lead Their Organization To Better UX

It’s a subtle, yet meaningful difference. Most UX folks let others, like their product managers or engineering leads, decide what they should work on next. 

In contrast, experience strategists choose their next project based on the organization’s highest priorities. Their contributions map directly to what the executives are most interested in.

I’m seeing that this independence promotes experience strategists as inspirational leaders. Not managers, they are something different. Instead, these are folks actively leading their coworkers and senior stakeholders across their organizations. 

They’ve successfully made the case that UX changes to product offerings will substantially improve people’s lives and drive value back to their organization. These improvements inspire their executives, who then pay more attention to the value they bring.

How Experience Strategists Work

The experience strategists I’ve met use a different set of methods, skills, and philosophies than those in the more tactical branches of UX research, interaction design, UX writing, and information architecture. These experience strategists are using advanced practices specifically tailored to their daily work.

For example, unlike other UX folks, I’ve observed that experience strategists don’t focus on deliverables for current projects, best practices, or design processes that yield only minor, incremental product enhancements. Instead, they focus their efforts on significant outcomes for the organization, which lead to major improvements in customers’ and users’ lives by delivering vastly improved user experiences. 

Another thing I’ve noticed is that experience strategists act proactively. They don’t wait to be asked or request permission to do their best work. 

Instead, they collaborate directly with the organization’s senior management to identify the most critical priorities, then dive right in to pinpoint how improved UX will advance their organization’s success. The strategist then provides each team with thoroughly researched guidance as they execute on those priorities, giving the organization a considerable strategic advantage in the marketplace when the work ships.

Another big difference I’ve seen is that experience strategists don’t use UX research the same way other UX folks do. They aren’t validating whether a product might be useful or minimally usable. Instead, they take a strategic research approach to truly understand what customers and users need, identifying opportunities that no one, including their competitors, currently delivers.

Their goal is to make their organization the world’s foremost experts in who their users are, what those users need, and what their current experiences are. Nobody should have more expertise about their customers and users than the organization’s decision-makers. This expertise drives true innovation throughout the organization.

Experience Strategy is an Emerging Branch of UX

Experience strategy is definitely a growing branch of UX. There are more strategists today in the workforce than we’ve ever seen before.  And it seems we will see more folks moving into this emerging role in the coming year. That’s very encouraging!

The journey to becoming an experience strategist is fascinating. None of the strategists I’ve met so far was asked to take on this role. None of them were promoted into it or explicitly hired to do this.

Instead, every one of them just started doing it. They saw an opportunity and stepped up to do the work, all on their own, without any formal invitation or promotion.

This situation harkens back to when the UX field first started. Nobody invited the first UXers to do their work. There weren’t any UX positions you could get hired for. The early UX folks were engineers and writers who just stepped into the role and started doing the work. Companies didn’t know they needed UX work, but quickly learned how valuable it was.

This Coming Year Will Be Big For Experience Strategists

That seems to be where we are today with experience strategists. Organizations don’t know they need an experience strategist, yet are excited when people step into the role because they immediately see the value. 

This situation is encouraging news for our field. Any one of us can become an experience strategist in our own organization. 

There don’t seem to be any prerequisites to becoming an experience strategist. You have to be intelligent and curious, but that describes most UX folks. 

There are a bunch of new skills to learn. However, I’ve trained quite a few people over the past year, and I’ve found that most people have no trouble mastering the necessary skills with some practice. 

I’ve also noticed the most successful folks exhibit a high level of confidence and empowerment. Again, these traits emerge with a bit of coaching and practice.

I think this will be a big year for this emerging branch of experience strategy, and for the UX field as a whole. We need more senior leaders in our UX work, and experience strategy seems like a sound approach to getting them. That so many folks are already having success doing just that bodes very well for our field, making me very optimistic for what’s coming.

---

Are you as excited about this emerging role of experience strategist? Are you thinking that you might like to explore what it would take to become an experience strategist?

I’ve set aside time in my calendar to talk with folks, just like you, about what a future journey to becoming an experience strategist might be like. If you’d like, you and I could discuss where your career and work are at and, together, brainstorm what the right path for you might be.

Pop me a message and we’ll discuss how you might become an experience strategist in your organization.