How a UX Agency Can Help You Chart a Course for Product Success
Achieving alignment on product vision can be a lot like navigating uncharted waters. If you don’t know what you're doing, strong currents of individual needs can pull you in all directions.
Clients often come to us hoping we can help them build their product. What they actually need, whether they know it or not, is somebody to help them find internal alignment.
Internal team discord is at the root of most failed products. Sometimes you need an outside perspective to help you "draw backwards" so you can chart a path forward.
Here’s how UX agencies like us can help you craft a unified vision for product success.
UX Agencies Can Help Cut Through the Haze
Teams often have a wide range of distinct opinions about a product and who it's meant to serve. That can set your compass spinning as you swirl on a sea of uncertainty.
A lack of clear leadership can compound the problem. Sometimes leaders, feeling a lack of confidence in their own vision, turn to the team for guidance. It can seem like nobody is actually steering the ship.
The first step in any successful voyage is to step back and understand where you are right now. You need to gather and distill your existing knowledge and opinions. You need to have a clear view of your current state.
This is why we like to start every new project with one-on-one stakeholder interviews. It gives us a 360-degree view of how the team sees the current state, and it gives each stakeholder a chance to have their voice heard.
Our position as an outsider allows us to draw connections that the team may be missing. It also allows us to remind them that they’re on the same team going in the same direction and ultimately wanting the same thing.
UX Agencies Can Help You Focus on the User
Our role as a consultant and advisor is to provide clarity and help chart a course to success. How we do that is sometimes more art than science, but it always comes back to one thing - what the user needs.
The best way to regain your bearings when internal discord stirs up confusion is to focus on the user. When you ground your product vision in user needs, you have an anchor to help stabilize the ship and you have a North Star to reorient you after a storm.
We help teams do this by getting business and product leaders, sales people, developers, and designers in the same room for a workshop. These aren’t gripe sessions and they’re not hackathons. They’re custom-designed to foster a sense of unity and purpose.
Every team member shares their perspective through structured exercises and honest dialogue. The goal is to create a shared understanding of the current state and a common vision for the future rooted in the core needs of your users.
UX Agencies Empower You to Map Your Journey Well Into the Future
Some of the most important things to come out of our workshops are the tangible tools that will foster further conversations. Things like journey and user empathy maps, SWOT analyses, and product roadmaps are critical for finding a path and sticking to it.
When everybody is consulting the same charts and maps, it's much easier to make adjustments to your chosen course. That’s why it’s crucial to have the participation and buy-in of all key stakeholders from the start. No great explorer goes it alone. They always have a team of experts playing their part to make the journey successful.
Many clients have told us that they’ve never seen their product or process documented with as much clarity as they have after one of our workshops. They feel empowered to finally have a model that represents reality and a roadmap to guide their work.
These maps and other deliverables are the basis for future collaboration. They're built for editing and updating as the journey unfolds. They're designed to help you navigate your way to a successful product that delivers what users want, how they want it.
Stop Trying to Go it Alone
UX agencies can play a pivotal role in helping you define your product vision and steer its future development. By identifying user needs, setting a clear vision, and empowering every team member to have their voice heard, agencies like Drawbackwards can help you cut through the clutter of competing opinions to create a well-charted course.
There’s no reason to flounder on your own when an experienced UX partner can help you deliver concrete results. If your compass is broken and you don’t know where to go next, let's talk about how we can help point you in the right direction.