Usability is Strategy!

I’ve met a lot of people in my career—including myself—who got confused by all the overcomplicated methods that have been invented to create a strategy.

Why is that?

• Lots of companies created complicated methods to make it look complicated. ’Cause complicated is more expensive. (Our fancy named own bullet proof method).

• Some added another layer to sell something, they claim to be the experts in (purpose).

• Some added methods to fix problems of other methods in the process that are based on wrong assumptions.

I’m not going into details here. If you know, you know. And if you don’t, you don’t need to, because it’s more confusing than it helps. This article wants to help to make things clear. So, strategy becomes a less confusing and fun task.

I am a Designer with 20+ years of experience in the field of UX, UI, Brand and Strategy. I teach design at a university. And let me tell you that, going back to the fundamentals does make a lot of sense. So my take for today is: Usability is Strategy!

Let me explain.

the extent to which a product, system, or service can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in a specified context of use.

Let’s break it down:

• Humans

• Context

• Goals

• Targeting

• Positioning

• Objectives

Do you already see the overlap?

Step by step:

It’s not about specifics such as age or education. It should be specific in terms of utilitarian needs. It’s not about people as segments. It’s about people in specific situations. What are the specific needs in a specific context? And yes, then you can say that these or these people have this need more often than others. Or that some people do not have this needs at all. Now, you can address the different people with precise communication. While your brand can communicate to the whole category, to activate future buyers.

Context refers to the surrounding environment (circumstances, competitors, zeitgeist, …). To be locatable in a four-dimensional space, you need to have a position. Otherwise, people can’t find you. A brand should not be like a quantum particle that exists in multiple places at once.

Your position is the summary of all the needs (I call it dissonance-profiles) your product is aiming to solve. A product or service is always serving multiple needs at once. If a water bottle of one brand would serve the same needs as the water bottle of another brand, brands would not exist.

To be locatable in space, you look at your needs and the context. You need to be specific, which ones you highlight and put in the center. Like oatly moved from a milk alternative for people that can’t drink milk to a lifestyle brand for people that want to show their identity as an environmentalist. So, you created a position based on the needs and relative to your competition. Not complicated or confusing. It just needs clear decisions for this or that. Not this and that.

A brand needs to serve its audience. A brand acts like a host. A brand needs to solve the needs (dissonance profiles) of their audience into a consonance. For this relaxing ability, people are willing to pay more. Because your brand makes the world predictable and secure. People predict the future to minimize surprise—help them! That’s the trade game a brand is playing.

To describe the goals we look at all the dissonances we solve and think of one word or very short phrase that describes the absence of all of them. That’s your brand’s core. For Oatly, I would say the core is: Sustainability Pioneer—the audience can feel engaged. From drinking oat milk because of a handicap, to drinking oat milk to preserve the future and your health.

Now you could formulate objectives around that. How do we tell our audience that oat milk in coffee tastes good, and you don’t have to sacrifice taste? Include some numbers and you have a measurable objective. Guess what Oatly told the audience: »I love Oatly in coffee if I don’t know it’s Oatly«

Artikel: Oatly: Do the Blind Test

Strategy does not need to be confusing. And it does not have to be made more complicated. Finding the needs, making decisions and defining the right goals is work enough to charge for.

Mark Ritson is criticizing that most marketeers jump into tactics before thinking about the strategy. Some designers do that too. The outcome is the same: unclear, misdirected communication without a clear goal.

YouTube: Mark Ritson on Why the Fundamentals Still Win

You know who is »good« designing without strategy? Right, AI. So level up on strategy to stay relevant.

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