UX Skills for Business Strategy

Preface

“What do you do here?” Kim, one of this book’s authors, had just started her first taxonomy job. She was asked this by one of the fast-growing agency’s founders in the elevator. Kim explained metadata as he accompanied her back to her team’s workspace. He asked the whole team: “Do you know how this place works?” When he saw them hesitate, he started whiteboarding. In just a few minutes he sketched out the agency’s financial model. For Kim, the rules of that early lesson that connected her work to customer success and organizational growth came to feel like gravity, an invisible yet obvious part of the work environment.

For another of this book’s authors, Maya, her understanding of business came before her awareness of user experience (UX). Working at artnet.com, Maya both sold and built a product—an online library of artist monographs. “It was later on when I realized the site isn’t exclusively about each artist’s oeuvre. There are people looking to learn about their art! Their experience of our product matters.” As Maya pivoted her career to research, she realized that her team had missed an opportunity to understand the needs of art lovers more deeply and develop a stronger value proposition for their product.

Another author of this book, Torrey, felt out of place as a nongamer working for Xbox (Microsoft’s gaming division) in her first UX role. Her manager put her at ease: “In every house where there’s a console, there are usually three to five people who don’t even ...