Product Strategy
February 5, 2025
For product teams, roadmap discussions often center on a tough question: How do we balance new features with UX and tech improvements?
While everyone agrees that user experience matters, design refinements frequently get deprioritized - labeled as ‘nice-to-haves’ when engineering bandwidth is scarce. The result? Clunky user flows pile up and preventable frustrations erode long-term loyalty.
This guide shares a proven approach to advocate for UX without sidelining business or technical priorities, turning contentious tradeoffs into collaborative wins.
Start by creating a dedicated backlog of UX improvements. Treat it like a living document, and categorize items by:
This backlog will provide you a visual inventory of low hanging fruits (high impact, low effort) that you can tackle. For example, fixing confusing button labels might take minimal engineering time but significantly improve usability.
Large-scale UX overhauls can intimidate stakeholders. Instead, slice projects into smaller, achievable phases. For instance:
This iterative approach builds momentum and demonstrates progress without overwhelming engineering teams.
Advocate for dedicated time in each quarter (e.g., 10-20% of sprint capacity) to address UX debt. Frame it as a long-term investment in user satisfaction and retention.
For example:“If we allocate 15% of Q4 to address design system debts, we can move much quickly next year on new feature designs.”
Align these efforts with broader product themes like trustworthiness (e.g., cleaning up spacing for polishness) or self-serve capability (e.g., unified tooltip placements).
Integrate UX enhancements into upcoming feature work. For example:
This minimizes additional effort while delivering incremental value.
Whenever you can, communicate your rationale on metrics and business outcomes win stakeholder buy-in. Examples:
Link UX debts to KPIs like conversion rates, NPS scores, or support ticket volume.
Visibility is key. Set a cadence to share your work to a broad audience. For example, at the end of each quarter:
Small wins add up. Grouping them together reinforces UX’s cumulative value.
Pushing for UX improvements requires collaboration, not confrontation. By framing UX as a shared goal (not a competing priority), you’ll build allies in product and engineering. Start small, prove value with data, and keep the user at the heart of every decision.
And remember, you can always get outside help to tackle UX improvements. At Koi Studios, we can be your team's fractional product designer, helping you address roadmap items without the full-time hire budget.
Ready to tackle UX debts? Bookmark this guide, share it with your team, and start building your backlog today!
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