Increased focus and decreased churn
UX Themes focus on a more significant, holistic problem area rather than discrete features in a milestone. This reduces the need for fire drills and mitigates context switching. This focus will allow designers to dive deep into related needs-based problems that lead to a comprehensive experience, including all associated touchpoints in the product.
Additionally, allocating more time to addressing validated user needs with solutions rather than assumptions will reduce design and research churn in the product development process. This approach also benefits the engineering teams, as they can focus their efforts and build to the scope envisioned in the theme while reducing context switching and avoiding the need to refactor the code in the event of a redesign.
Enhanced strategic collaboration
UX Themes influence strategy through collaboration with Product Managers to define the goals, identify and prioritize unmet user needs, and transparently maintain and update the product roadmap over time. Themes also allow us to understand our value as a team by measuring our success against the business outcomes our counterparts define for each theme.
Roadmaps and UX Themes
UX Themes organized by priority become a UX Roadmap. This roadmap complements the product roadmap and does not replace or supersede them. Therefore, it’s helpful to think of a UX Roadmap as a view of the Product roadmap through the Product Design and UX Research filter.
Resources
- Neilsen Norman Group UX Roadmap guide and the Neilsen Norman Group UX Theme guide are prerequisites for understanding the overall purpose of this process.
- Introduction and usage guidelines for UX Themes – UX Themes | GitLab Handbook