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Not sure exactly how to phrase this question, but what would you consider overarching strategies or artefacts for improving UX of products in the long term. These would be maintained within team and serve as a overall guide that help make decisions when designing.

Some examples i believe that might be tone of voice guide, brand guide, visual direction, customer journey map.

What else is out there?

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    Leverage a design system. Tokenize everything.
    – Jon Fukuda
    Feb 25, 2020 at 21:08
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    Some more ideas: accessibility minimum guide (define how much design needs to be adopted for users with disabilities), design system adoption criteria (define what are conditions an element or screen should be adopted in design system), Ultimate UX principles framework (make a frame with various UX and design principles, Nielsen Normans, Gestalt... and loop them on each new design)...
    – xul
    Feb 25, 2020 at 22:39

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Strategies

  • Consistency: Consistent patterns in workflows, consistency in UI design, consistency in interaction patterns. Internal consistency is key, but often there are big wins in learnability if you are also consistent with other applications. This is why frameworks like Bootstrap and Google Material are so popular.
  • Tight Customer Feedback Loop: Best way to improve the user experience is to understand how users experience your product or service. Understand and empathize early, then build, then verify that what is built works.
  • UX Process: the repeateable process for conducting user research, extracting key insights, designing based on the insights, and testing the design is a critical strategic element for continued UX maturity.
  • Internal Buy-In: You can have a strong set of artifacts but if your teams don't buy into their value, then they won't be used. To increase your organization's UX maturity you need UX champions across various departments.
  • Metrics What gets measured, gets managed. Define the UX KPIs based off of your company KPIs and keep track of them. Tie UX efforts to increases in the metrics. This increase is easy if the UX process is strong.

Artifacts

  • Human Interface Guide or Interaction Guide or UI Guide or Pattern Library. They go by lots of names but it is the tool that represents the Design System. It displays the type of UI components used in the application. Each component explains how to use it, when to use it, and why it is designed that way (backed by user research). This enforces the consistency strategy.

    • Tone of Voice/Copywriting Guide Likely a subset of the Human Interface Guide, this tool helps copywriters keep a consistent tone of voice that matches the brand of the application, service, and company.

  • User Personas This tool takes the cold, hard facts of the user research and makes them approachable. Just like people develop a personal connection to their favorite tv or movie characters, you want your team to develop a personal connection to your personas.

    • Customer Journey Maps With personas defined, the customer journey map shows how these personas move from "I wonder what this product is" to being a repeated purchaser/user and product advocate. It calls out the pain points in the journey and the joy points in the journey.

  • Glossary of Terms this could be a part of the Design System or Human Interface Guide. It is a list of terms used in an application. These terms should match customer's expectations and show a level of consistency. Many companies (particularly in B2B) have inconsistency in terminology within their organization and between them and their clients.

  • Site Map/Taxonomies/Navigation Diagrams These information architecture tools help communicate how the application or service is structured and how it should be structured. Taxonomies will show how to group objects together and what content those objects can or should show to users.

  • Competitive Analysis Report: Its important to know what your competitors are doing and how well they provide a desirable user experience. A report on the major competitors, their offerings, their product/service workflows, and their branding helps the team understand user expectations and where competitor pain points can become your organization's key opportunities.

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  • Is Pettern a typo o should I google-fu something?
    – bracco23
    Feb 27, 2020 at 16:48
  • lol. Definitely a typo.
    – Benjamin S
    Feb 27, 2020 at 16:55
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If there is one overarching strategy for improving UX in the long term it would be good management.

The things you mention are the artifacts of a continuously iterating process:

Process:

  • (Re)define business strategy
  • (Re)define knowledge of the target group
  • (Re)define tone of voice guide, brand guide, visual direction, customer journey map etc.
  • (Re)define technical requirements

Artifacts:

  • Customer journey map
  • Design system, brand guide, content strategy etc. etc.
  • Knowledge of the target group (persona's)
  • A set business strategy
  • Solid communication and documentation company wide (see this related question)
  • Technical standardization and documentation

To keep improving UX in the long term it is a matter of defining the right artifacts, strategies and methods over and over again. And since marketeers, designers, developers etc. all have their own specialized equipment for that, it's a matter of good management to keep an eye on the overal quality and UX of the product.

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I'll begin saying that while I'm not a, by any means, UX expert or even working at an UX position (I still have to take user experience into account when coding frontend, f.e.), I've been very interested in the subject for some time now, and have been doing some research (I'll be reading some articles on the subject and latest trends from time to time).

Adding to Benjamin's S reply, you could be looking at a very extensive/thorough Design System (might not even be called that in the end), applying to each and every aspect of the company/team (including any products - akin to what Google/Microsoft/Apple, etc. does). And while most design systems you'll find will be for specific components/parts of a company (for example, https://www.carbondesignsystem.com/, which is more specific/geard towards development), I believe you can apply the same principles into a lot of stuff (including how copy should be handled, the tone, etc.).

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At really, if you create fixed patterns for the UX you will swim against the flow and limiting the user experience.

The design has patterns but UX doesn't.

The UX is based on research and tests to obtain results. And you must monitor the website and changes. The technologies update fast the user experience changes together.

I recommend you to create a culture of UX in your company. Everyone should think about the user first. Everybody can share tech news with all.

You also can create a routine of tests to identify issues or discover parts of your website that should be redesigned to keep the usability on a high-level. In this case, you need to define a responsible for the tests and what type of tests should be done and how frequently.

As soon as any problem is discovered, you should add to the task list and setting the priority.

From there, your team just need to follow the UX process (using the pattern Artifacts suggested by JazRo) that you also can design.

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