How to be strategic in UX? Communication is the first step.
The project for the module UX Design Strategy and Futures brought a critical understanding of the process of establishing a holistic perception of a design plan. Understanding the multiple phases of a project in UX is crucial to achieving success on it. In my opinion, my group and I managed to work in synchrony and perceive it from a higher level, which is sufficient to guarantee a very good grade, such as A.
We have had regular meetings during this module and have improved our communication skills significantly. Our perception has broadened immensely concerning the complexity of managing diverse opinions and solutions according to the challenges faced. A rewarding personal achievement was related to interdisciplinarity and eagerness to work as a group instead of as individuals. The methodologies, although not fully implemented, were done incrementally. Most of the time, our ideas and solutions were an aggregation of experience and research from us, the team members.
Leadership in our team depended on the needs of the tasks ahead, flexibility, and an excellent background to support our approach and decisions. My challenge in this assessment was to convey information clearly, avoiding redundancy and tendentiousness in my points of view. Clarity and objectivity were weaknesses on my side. As a group, the hardest part was managing and sticking to the task division among us, which created occasional friction. As a positive outcome, I choose the communication skills acquired during this journey, the overview of the tools available, and the context in which they can be helpful.
If I had more time to finish the task, I would look into better strategies for achieving balance in my team. For example, some members had mentioned the need for alone time to figure out solutions instead of developing them together. I firmly believe that we could have benefited from having time to think and bring ideas to the discussion. Sometimes our solutions were based more on time constraints than the effectiveness of choice. Time constraints are constantly addressed as a negative implication. However, in the context of research, I would like to be more comfortable exploring opportunities and techniques. UX design is embedded chiefly in corporative environments, and because of that, I would rather understand better the options that I have available in the market more in-depth. The strategies are so varied that it would be helpful to understand the differences between them and their applications contextually.
Furthermore, most of the time, UX designers lack the desired tools, people, budget, time, skills, and various other resources. Yet, creativity and problem-solving skills are indispensable to achieving goals. Progressively, organizations have noticed the necessity of including UX in their planning and strategical steps. As a result, services and products have been more effective, developed more quickly, target-focused, and in less time and at a lower cost.
Despite the obstacles, there is a significant growth in the importance of UX within the industry. However, the creation and application of mechanisms and more suitable strategies are still in the early stages. Standardizing procedures could help give UX Design the reliability and stability that people from other sectors within organizations need. It could help them perceive UX design as not only a work of imagination and creative minds but instead a process with defined stages and targets. A strategic bridge between organizations and users, a continuous improvement of systems, operations, services, tools and solutions. UX can give essential guidelines to help businesses create relevant products and have a social impact.
One question that arose in our group presentation was ensuring communication between all the people working on our project. In conclusion, we believe in transparency throughout the process; besides that, constant, objective and short meetings to integrate UX and other teams would be our way of manage and avoiding communication breakdown.
