An interview with three UX strategists

The role of UX Strategist is a relatively new one on UX design teams, and has recently addressed in two articles on UXmatters: “UX Strategy: The Heart of User-Centered Design” and “What Does a UX Strategist Do?“.

To provide more insight, Paul Bryan, manager of the UX Strategy and Planning group on LinkedIn and organizer of the the first international UX Strategy Conference (which will take place in Atlanta next year), interviewed three UX strategists at well-known companies: Nicole Netland of Best Buy, Rick Castanho of Lowe’s and Stephanie Sansoucie of Kohl’s.

“[Given the secrecy and confidentiality of what UX Strategists work on], the best that I can do is to continue to explore the topic of UX strategy tangentially, using knowledge that I can share openly to help push back the boundaries of secrecy. And that’s the spirit in which these three UX Strategists approached this interview, too. If, when reading their answers, it seems to you that we’ve omitted something important, it’s probably because we have. What I find most interesting about these interviews—besides the window that they provide into UX strategy practice—is that, while they begin by describing widely disparate evolutions of the discipline of UX strategy within specific organizations, they end with very compatible, even overlapping visions of the future.”