UX Leadership and Strategy: A New Direction

UX Insights - User Experience Leadership and Strategy

If LinkedIn is to be believed UX design is a hot mess right now. People are regularly announcing that death of UX, complaining they cannot get jobs and entire companies are abandoning the term UX for product design. Not to mention the fact that AI will supposedly be replacing us all. If you care at all about improving the user experience, this will no doubt feel concerning. It certainly shocked me when I first saw the sheer number of doom and gloom comments.

The Real State Of UX

But the more I looked into this the more I realized that this does not represent the reality. In fact the World Economic Forum believe that the UX profession will be one of the fastest growing roles over the next five years. They also identify deep human insight, strategic thinking, and leadership as key skills, all of which are inherent in the roll of UX.

So where does this disparity between online sentiment and economic predictions come from? The problem lies in how people choose to define user experience design, and the fact that many fundamentally misunderstand the breadth and depth of the discipline.

Many Misunderstand UX

For many, UX design has been largely synonymous with UI design. Sure, a UX designer might spend more time conducting user research and testing, but their primary deliverable is still a user interface.

When you have this view of UX it is fair to say that things are dramatically changing at the moment.

• AI is fundamentally changing the nature of how we interact with technology and we may well see less interactions happen through a traditional user interface.
• There is a growing number of designers working on products these days and so adopting the title product designer instead makes sense.
• Add to this the fact that the market is over saturated with bootcamp graduates and it is not surprising that there is a feeling that UX is on the decline.

But this really only look at a fraction of the user experience.

Jared Spool put it well when he compared it to catering. He says it is like we are seeing a decline in demand for burgers and too many cooks who flip burgers. These burger flippers are worried, but instead of saying that burgers are in decline they are concluding people don’t eat out anymore. They are suggesting all restaurants are in trouble, not just burger joints.

UX Strategy is the Future

I believe UX design, in its broadest sense, is more in demand than ever before. But it's not just about tactics - it's about strategy. The work goes beyond making Figma files and user interfaces. Instead, it focuses on how organizations work, their culture, how they communicate, and all the ways people interact with them. The user interface is just a small piece of this bigger picture.

We Need a New Generation of UX Champions

The trouble is few are equipped to fulfill this role. Bootcamps certainly don’t teach it and many of those who find themselves in UX leadership roles have been given no training.

To change how people see and value UX, we need new generation of leaders. These leaders must know what UX really encompasses and how to make positive changes in their organizations.

I Want To Help You And UX Evolve

With all this in mind, I am relaunching my newsletter with a focus on UX strategy and leadership. After working in this field for 30 years and with things as they stand today, I feel this is the perfect time to share what I've learned.

My hope is that I can give back to the community and maybe shape the future of UX to be about more than UI design. Realistically I am now in the latter part of my career and so my desire is to help the next generation of UX leaders and advocates.

In each issue I am going to take you step-by-step through what true UX looks like and how to impact the entire user experience, not just the user interface.

Ultimately the plan is to bring all of this together into a book. However, until then you can subscribe and join me on the journey. You can also signup at anytime in the future and take the email course from the beginning so you don’t miss out on what I have covered to that point.

My intention is to write this for anybody who cares about the user experience, not just user experience designers. As you will quickly discover, I believe that UX is an organization wide responsibility and that we all impact the experience whatever our role. But, I also want to help UX designers who want to do more than work on interfaces and move into leadership roles.

I am hoping you will join me for this journey. For me this is a passion project and an attempt to finally ensure user experience gets the respect it deserves. However, that is only going to work if people like you join me.

So, if that sounds good, you can subscribe below today.