I was excited and humbled to find out last week that I was awarded top prize in a UX strategy challenge sponsored by Rolf Molich of DialogDesign, and coordinated by UXPA Boston. You can read more about the scenario-based challenge via UXPA Boston’s dedicated web page, which also has the submissions from the other awardees – Timo Jokela, Alan Wexelblat, Nick Weinel, Neha Kale, Yasmin Diederiks and Mark Becker from UserWorks, and Peter McNally. The submissions were subject to a blind review by a panel of judges some of whose careers I have been following for many years: Carolyn Snyder, Tom Tullis, Rolf Molich, Chris Hass, Meena Kothandaraman and Susan Rice.

I’m sorry that prior commitments will prevent me meeting the Boston community in person at Boston UXPA’s 18th Annual User Experience Conference; but hopefully will be able to rectify that at UXPA 2019 in Scottsdale in June.

The judges summarized my submission as follows:

This submission takes the most strategic approach, taking into account the industry, the company’s strengths and weaknesses, and the risk of disruption. It is the best UX strategy in terms of positioning Gamma Airlines for the future rather than just fixing what is broken today.

I’ll admit there were some gaps, but I was nevertheless proud to submit my entry knowing that I gave it my best shot in the time allocated #personalgrowthgoals. If you would like a copy of my submission and accompanying ‘pitch deck’, let me know—I’d be happy to share it.

The topic of UX strategy and how best to ‘institutionalize’ it is one I have an ongoing interest in. If anyone reading this is interested in continuing the discussion, I would love to hear from you!