The purpose of this creating this UX Strategy Blueprint is to serve as a strategic planning process that helps to prioritize tasks and ensure our team isn't spending time and resources on non-essential work while developing our product. It takes into account the goals of the business, but also the needs of the consumers. A fully realized strategy also helps our stakeholders get a glimpse into our thought process and the reasons behind why we’re conducting tasks the way we’ve chosen to. It also includes a full understanding of the current state of things, aspirations for “the perfect outcome”, the development of a vision for future user experience and definitions (i.e. KPIs/metrics, design system, branding guidelines, etc).​

Now that thorough evaluations have been conducted, we can now take our ideas and translate them into wireframes. Phase one of this design process consisted of group discussions and “Low-Fidelity Wireframes” (black and white sketches) to determine the desired layout and feel of the new website. The next phase is “Medium Fidelity Wireframes” to breath a bit more life into the black and white sketches. The final wireframing stage is “High-Fidelity Wireframes” and simulations with the help of Axure.

The Objective

Before embarking on a UX Strategy, I took some time to familiarize myself with the company and what the "problem" was. What were the user goals and business strategies?

When I first joined the company, ReturnLogic was relatively small; no more than 15 employees. There was no design department... which meant no branding guidelines, nor a design system to assist with product and creative assets. Customers had been poached by ReturnLogic's competitors, and it was my responsibility to find out why.

Questions

1. How do we prevent losing additional customers?
2. How do we improve our product and make it scalable, and modern?
3. How do we create ... the best product?

Plan

After closely examining the product myself for user experience discrepancies, and collecting user data from our Intercom customer service input, I then moved to hold focus groups with our target audience. I was able to collect substantial feedback that would spearhead upcoming design and development changes. Feedback included the following:

• Customers wanted the ability to create bundling and kitting options
• A responsive and mobile-friendly product
• Customers want the ability to customize their return centers to reflect their brand
• A product that's API driven to effectively collect user return data

Based on the research I obtained, I was then able to help define users personas, iron out user stories, scenarios and user flows.

Now that I had a solid idea of how the product should flow, I was able to begin to explore creative ideas. For testing, we created a user account under the name "Kittehbox" — a sample store that sells cat paraphernalia, and... clothing (hey, no one said the fake business model had to make sense, lol). The existing design was pretty outdated: there was an embedded background of seafoam rolling onto an ocean shore, floating card components, little to no padding between the child text/ parent containing elements, inconsistency in textual hierarchy, and much more.

A new design would be a huge undertaking and best done in small bits. I wanted to ensure that I'd have buy-in from all the necessary stakeholders. I was able to navigate the remaining work with the following process ...

1. The old fashion method of strictly pen to paper (I'm a sucker for sketching before hand)
2. Creating a wireframe of the existing product workflow (to capture what components were already being utilized)
3. Creating a low-fidelity wireframe (bare-bones, just to ensure that the structural layout has approved workflow)
4. Creating a high-fidelity wireframe using Axure (the clickable wireframe behaves exactly as the eventual prototype)