UX Glossary | S
Specialty roadmap
Also: Discipline roadmap
A slice of the field roadmap limited to one UX specialty, such as user research or accessibility.
A specialty roadmap takes the field roadmap and keeps only the future work belonging to a single specialty within UX: research, interaction design, content design, accessibility, design systems, UX writing. The specialist lead owns it.
What it is for
Each specialty has needs the wider team does not see. A research lead needs to plan a participant panel, tooling and a repository. A design system lead needs to plan component coverage and migration. A specialty roadmap gives that person a document to plan hires, training and tools against, and to explain to others why their discipline needs what it asks for.
What it looks like
Short and specific. For user research it might list foundational studies the organisation has never done, a study cadence for each product, and the infrastructure to share findings. For accessibility it might list an audit, remediation of the worst failures, and training for the people who write the code.
Common mistake
Drawing each specialty’s roadmap in isolation. Research plans a study programme that design cannot absorb, or design plans a component overhaul that research never validates. Lay the specialty roadmaps side by side against the UX roadmap and check that the dependencies line up before anyone takes them to leadership.