Think First

An inspiration, a motivation, a goal. If you have a strategy, that means you know what you’re doing, who you’re doing it for and why it matters — both to you and the people you expect to use the end result. It means you have a solid understanding of:
(a) what users expect to accomplish with what you’re building, and
(b) what you expect to accomplish with it.

Next, Move to Users
After stakeholders, you start talking to users

Talk to everyone who is in any way connected

You’re looking at the end result, not the process. And the process, my friends, is where the power of design really lies.

If you don’t come up with a good solution to something, it’s likely that you don’t have a very good problem

Strategy Means Putting People First
Products are used by people, so putting users and their needs first is a pretty good place to start:
What do they need to be able to do, and why do these things matter to them?
What do they want from us, and how is that related to other goals they may have?
How does using our product fit with other products they may be using?
What do they expect, based on their experiences with similar (or even dissimilar) products?

On the other side of the split are information-oriented concerns:
What information is being served up, and what makes it relevant or valuable or useful?
How much data or content exists, and how is it organized and prioritized?
How is it labeled, and do those labels make sense to users?
What does it mean to the people who use it?

How do they move through information?
How do they get to the things that they need?
What are they ways in which they can read, write or otherwise manipulate data?

If you have a strategy, that means you know what you’re doing, who you’re doing it for and why it matters — both to you and the people you expect to use the end result.

If you have a strategy, that means you know what you’re doing, who you’re doing it for and why it matters — both to you and the people you expect to use the end result.