Alexandra's Design and Strategy Playbook

The genesis of every idea is a clear understanding of the problem at hand. It's not just about knowing what's wrong, but diving deep into why it's wrong.

When a problem is presented, it is often the cognitive representation of the problem by the person coming to you. But this person arrived at this representation based on a set of facts, events, or assumptions.

These assumptions and representations might pre-shape and bias toward a specific solution, that might not be the cheapest or easiest to implement, or the one that will best solve the business and customer need.

I engage in active conversations with stakeholders, dissect every Objective and Key Result (OKR) to understand its inception, and ask the golden question repeatedly: "Why?" This recursive approach ensures I'm working with irrefutable facts rather than preconceived notions.

Sometimes, ambiguity lies not in the problem but in the language we use. I once had an objective to create 2 pieces of "actionable, clinically valuable " interactive content with a "marketing distribution plan". By breaking down vague terms and seeking clarity on words like "actionable", I've often found new angles and perspectives to approach a challenge.

Armed with a clarified problem, I dive into data. From Hotjar user session recordings to Mixpanel data, and deep dives into past and new interviews, I immerse myself fully in ALL the data I have available. As I go through interviews, keeping my ears open and free from biases allows me to discern patterns that might otherwise be overlooked.

As data flows in, intuitions begin to form. I jot these down and start connecting the dots. I identify themes in the data, and then find customer quotes that go for or against those themes.

Ideas aren't birthed in isolation. I really like using the Lean UX Canvas framework to lead targeted ideation sessions, because it's all about doing design and development work in the leanest way possible. This means that you have to identify the metrics that you want to impact for the business and the user, and all the ideation is structured around solutions that can have an impact on those metrics. Many ideas are then evaluated for risk and impact on the metric, which allows natural prioritization of the best ideas that solve the business need.

Before you begin, make sure all participants have reviewed the research outcomes, so that any ideas are data-informed. Moreover, your research outcomes can be reflected in section 4 (User Outcomes and Benefits) to make sure everyone keeps them in mind.

This approach also encourages teams to think about the MVP state for an idea to test the hypothesis of this idea possibly impacting the metrics, in order to have an answer as fast as possible and to justify whether to spend more effort there or not.

The onboarding experience project I've led the UX Design on for Everyday Speech is a good example of when the team established clear success metrics: by defining that we wanted to reduce time-to-value by 50%, we strongly oriented the solution in the direction of something that would truly have an impact: an actions checklist that would push the user to actions that would bring them to the 'aha' moment.

I also defined the necessary data tracking for Mixpanel by creating new properties that would allow us to track the before/after.

Lastly, I believe in the power of feedback. Whether it's a tangible deliverable or a strategic plan, I engage stakeholders in candid discussions almost every day. By inviting insights on outcomes and evaluating the soundness of my strategies at all stages of the process, I ensure continuous improvement and alignment with our overarching goals.