Hire the best design talent and learn how to work with the designers in a startup.
Also checkout http://uxforstartups.org/ for the video and the handouts.
2. Setting expectations
• This workshop is not for Experts
• It is for startup founders, engineers, product
managers, marketing, or folks of large companies looking to
improve UX
• The 3 things we will focus on
– Find the right design talent
– Set up a design culture, process, and UX strategy
– Work with designers in a group to create a conceptual design
UX
FOR STARTUPS
3. INDEX
• Great experience = great brand
• Make the right investment in design
• Design thinking starts with design culture
• Understand the context
• Creating the concept
UX
FOR STARTUPS
4. Customary Apple Quote!
―People think it's this veneer — that the designers
are handed this box and told, 'Make it look good!'
That's not what we think design is. It's not just
what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it
works‖
- Steve Jobs
UX
FOR STARTUPS
5. Great experience = great brand
Business models Cloud, Web
Profit Margins SaaS, Mobile
Lifetime value Deployment
Supply Chain Business Technology
Viability Feasibility
Branding
Design
User Advocacy
User Experience Desirability
Design Innovation
Design is layered just like
tech/business UX
FOR STARTUPS
6. What do these startups have in common?
UX
FOR STARTUPS
7. Each of these startups have designers as co-
founders
For a long time, a pair of co-founders consisted of an executive
and an engineer. It worked for Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple.
Design is becoming more and more prevalent in new startups –
Square, Path, Airbnb, and more are pushing the envelope.
http://startupsthisishowdesignworks.com/
UX
FOR STARTUPS
10. Great products speak for themselves – Connect with
Emotions
Try quitting out of facebook!
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FOR STARTUPS
11. INDEX
• Great experience = great brand
• Make the right investment in design
• Design thinking starts with design culture
• Understand the context
• Creating the concept
UX
FOR STARTUPS
12. Key Challenges in Hiring Design Talent
• Not enough designers in India
• Skills in digital, mobile and web are limited
• Visual design, Interaction design, front-end design and user
research are highly specialized fields
• Don’t chase unicorns
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FOR STARTUPS
13. Design Talent Acquisition Funnel
1 2 3 4 5
Job Description Marketing Resume Portfolio Design Test
Along with an interview
Alternate channels
such as referrals
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FOR STARTUPS
14. 1. A Distinctive Job Description
Airbnb is revolutionizing the way the world travels. Tagged by Time Magazine as the "eBay of Space", Airbnb is a
profitable, fast-growing, online marketplace giving everyday people the ability to monetize their most valuable asset: an extra
bedroom, vacation rental, airbed, castle, boat, tree house or trailer. With a presence in over 9000 cities in 160 countries Airbnb
is backed by Sequoia Capital and Greylock and is one of their most exciting start-ups.
Airbnb's interaction designers make the complex simple and know the details aren't the details, they are the product. Do you
love to choreograph the dance of getting users from A to B? Are your instincts in touch with a higher power known as 'usability'?
Well then you get that the best interactions aren't even noticed by a user because the design gets out of their way. We seek
someone who loves getting in the weeds to smooth out exisiting interactions and invent new ones. The future of our
mom's being able to use Airbnb will depend on your work.
Online portfolio required to apply.
RESPONSIBILITIES
Work collaboratively within the product team to map user flows, paper prototype interactions, and oversee the building process
Concept interactions across mediums: web, mobile and email
Rapid prototype in Fireworks or other tool of choice
Present at weekly team meetings
REQUIREMENTS
Excellent communication skills
Excellent information visualization skills
Lo-fi & hi-fi prototyping skills
Working knowledge of Adobe CS
You've unpackaged at least one Apple product
BFA/MFA or equivalent industry experience
BONUS SKILLS
Experience designing for mobile devices
Your favorite color is in Pantone
Moleskine is your middle name UX
FOR STARTUPS
15. 2. Marketing
Email Groups Events
HCIIDC – Design India Yahoo! Group USID, World Usability Day, HCI
IxDA – Interaction Design Association Conferences, dCamps
Professional Networks Design Portfolio Sites
LinkedIn, Zerply, Facebook, Twitter, Glassdoor Coroflot, Dribble, Behance, Flickr
Design School Alumni Associations Job Sites
National Institute of Design SimplyHired, Monster, Naukri, Olx, Shine,
Industrial Design Center, IITB Hasgeek
Department of Design, IITG
Design Programme, IITK
• Don’t just look for low cost freelancers for core product work. 99designs is good
for logos and banners, but much less for product UX work
• UX talent is everywhere. Don’t jump to conclusions about designers.
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FOR STARTUPS
16. Evaluation Parameters
Basic Hygiene
Resume Overall Fit
Ecosystem Thinking
Portfolio Iterative Design
Visual Thinking
Execution v/s Time
Design Test Team Dynamics
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FOR STARTUPS
17. 3. Resume
Top five things to look for in any designer resume
Total years of
experience v/s number
of products launched
Experience working
with developers and
product folks?
Did designs become
real products or are
they only concepts?
Design tools and
fundamental design
thinking are both Skills and thought
important process matter more
than pedigree
UX
FOR STARTUPS
18. Evaluation Parameters
Basic Hygiene
Resume Overall Fit
Ecosystem Thinking
Portfolio Iterative Design
Visual Thinking
Execution v/s Time
Design Test Team Dynamics
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FOR STARTUPS
19. 4. Portfolio
A picture is worth more than a 1000 words in a resume
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FOR STARTUPS
20. Evaluation Parameters
Basic Hygiene
Resume Overall Fit
Ecosystem Thinking
Portfolio Iterative Design
Visual Thinking
Execution v/s Time
Design Test Team Dynamics
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FOR STARTUPS
21. 4. Design Test
“Design a car-pool application”
Car-pooling is a common practice among daily DESIGN PROCESS
commuters to help reduce traffic on the roads and While the final solution you propose is
also save money and fuel. While we all wish to important, we would like to see the process
participate, it is still an ad-hoc process to you followed while arriving at the design.
participate in this practice effectively. Despite the Share a document that shows the process you
great adoption of social networks and smart went through in arriving at the solution(s) in
phones we have not seen an effective car pool terms of diagrams/sketches/notes.
application.
Describe the problems identified, the
Your mission is to solve this problem by using your workflows involved, the end user needs and
social connections and real-time updates. Design how your solution succeeds in addressing
an interactive application, which would allow users those.
to plan, schedule, and use car pool
EVALUATION CRITERIA
DELIVERABLES This small exercise is aimed at giving us an
The design work you share could be in a detailed idea about your skills in identifying UI
wireframe mode – however please do include at problems, the way you approach to solve them
least one screen illustrating the and your clarity in communication &
colors, textures, forms and type you envision - presentation skills. We are also looking for
visually representative of a live, real application. evidence of lateral thinking (beyond
obvious), creative problem solving and
Please mention all assumptions you would make in attention to details; your ability to utilize proper
terms of features, technology used, user profiles tools to create rich, meaningful, innovative and
and the tasks they are expected to perform, before inviting products/applications.
explaining the design solution
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FOR STARTUPS
22. Evaluation Parameters - Summary
Basic Hygiene
Resume Overall Fit
Ecosystem Thinking
Portfolio Iterative Design
Visual Thinking
Execution v/s Time
Design Test Team Dynamics
UX
FOR STARTUPS
23. INDEX
• Great experience = great brand
• Make the right investment in design
• Design thinking starts with design culture
• Understand the context
• Creating the concept
UX
FOR STARTUPS
24. What is design thinking?
Thinking like a designer can transform the way you develop
products, services, processes—and even strategy. – Tim
Brown, IDEO
Begin at the beginning
Take a human- centered approach
Try early and often
Seek outside help
Budget to the pace of innovation
Find Talent anyway you can
Design for the cycle
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FOR STARTUPS
25. Design is a mindset
process
• Lean design process
• UX Principles
• UX Metrics
culture
planning • Work out loud
• Trust
• Design reviews
Design
people
structure • Get right designers on boar
• Design reporting
• Their growth path and train
and structure
• Right tools and infrastructure UX
FOR STARTUPS
27. UX Principles
1. FAST
Scannable Content
Aggregated
Preload everything
Like a physical object
2. BEAUTIFUL
Content is king (UI should be as simple as possible)
More than just text
Randomness
3. SOCIAL
People, not RSS feeds
Participate easily
Inherent personalization
What’s NEXT?
Social sharing and discovery
Self-published magazines
Ads as content UX
FOR STARTUPS
28. Startups and design process
The speed at which a startup can learn is its
competitive advantage and the defining
factor in its success. But startups can't rely
on the processes and infrastructure that
their established competitors use, because
those "best practices" tend to kill disruptive
innovation.
- Eric Reis, HBR Blog
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FOR STARTUPS
29. Minimum viable v/s minimum desirable product
Aim for a minimal desirable product
rather than a minimal viable product.
Design is the differentiator.
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FOR STARTUPS
30. Design process
empathy define ideate prototype test
Startups have changing goals.
The design process must be able to tolerate large
swings
in the direction of the venture
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FOR STARTUPS
31. Design process
empathy define ideate prototype test
Startups have a bias
towards this end!
UX FOR STARTUPS
32. Design process
empathy define ideate prototype test
This is usually ignored Not enough user
and UX methods will qualitative feedback
REALLY help!
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FOR STARTUPS
34. There is no real substitute for deep user research
UX
FOR STARTUPS
35. Tools to do research for digital products
UX
FOR STARTUPS
36. INDEX
• Great experience = great brand
• Make the right investment in design
• Design thinking starts with design culture
• Understand the context
• Creating the concept
UX
FOR STARTUPS
37. The Context and Concept
empathy define ideate prototype test
Context Concept
UX
FOR STARTUPS
38. To Understand the Context - Think Ecosystem
• What is the users environment
• Who are the primary users and who else do they interact
with to accomplish their goals ( people, objects )
• How will they use the product
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FOR STARTUPS
39. Think Ecosystem
Bulk Product Supply
Logistics
Product Delivery
Printed Receipt Customer Order
Details
Supplier
Product Offerings
Discounts
User Account
Procurement
Search Products
Payment
Discover Products
Order Products
Payment
Office Manager Manage Order
Consumer Repeats Order www.officesamaan.in
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FOR STARTUPS
40. Personas
• A persona is a fictitious user that you design based on
understanding the users context.
• Persona’s help you simplify your requirements.
UX
FOR STARTUPS
41. Persona: Rajan
Demographics:
Male , 24, grew up in Mangalore, now works in
Bangalore
B. Com from Manipal University, first job after
college.
Rajan is an office manager for CoolToyz, a
Bangalore company with 100 employees, in
HSR Layout. Cooltoyz is a fast rising player in
the children’s toys market. They sell toys
through a store in Koramangala and its
website.
Work context: Pain points: Needs/Wants:
A lot of Rajan’s time is spent on Rajan currently procures all Rajan needs a convenient
managing office supplies. items through middlemen who Single point solution to
Growing at nearly 5 employees usually don’t have all the items manage supplies including:
a month, he needs. They are also not
Cooltoyz needs more flexible to accommodate needs • Easy way to check key product
supplies than ever, at of small companies like availability
reasonable rates. Rajan’s job CoolToyz. Rajan wastes a lot of • Save costs for regularly ordered
has become quite time chasing different suppliers items
Challenging in managing this and doesn’t always get what he • Discover new items, and buy with
growth in demand needs confidence
• Ability to reorder with ease in the
future
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FOR STARTUPS
42. Scenario’s
• Scenario is a fictional story about the "daily life of" or a sequence of
events with the persona as the main character, doing a key task.
• The story should be specific of the events happening that relate to
the problems of the persona, and normally the main research
questions the design process is built upon.
• Scenarios should be such that design implications can be derived
out of it
• Scenarios are only about the User.
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FOR STARTUPS
43. Scenario
• “A housewife will come to our website, browse and
purchase a vacuum cleaner”
• “An HR manager will use our app to track every minute
where each job applicant is in the hiring process”
• “A teenager will use our product to make free video calls
to her sister in another country”
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FOR STARTUPS
44. Group Activity: Lets write one scenario for Rajan
• Write it as a story such that
– Design implications can be derived from it
– It should be about the user and not technology
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FOR STARTUPS
45. INDEX
• Great experience = great brand
• Make the right investment in design
• Design thinking starts with design culture
• Understand the context
• Creating the concept
UX
FOR STARTUPS
46. Create Concept
• Select the right structure ( Navigation + information
architecture and then dive into detail design
• When you have followed the other steps and have
hired a good UX designer, great detail design will
follow.
• But getting the conceptual model and structure right,
is critical
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FOR STARTUPS
48. Good Navigation takes care of 80% of your design
But, Bad navigation….
UX FOR STARTUPS
49. To sum up !
• Great experience = great brand
• Make the right investment in design
• Design thinking starts with design culture
• Understand the context
• Creating the concept
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FOR STARTUPS
50. “If you hold out with your vision a little bit, it’s like a cake
being put in the oven. The scene doesn’t work
immediately, you have to bake it a little bit. It’s
unfair, when you begin to create a shot, say, or a
scene, that it’s going to immediately be like those beautiful
scenes in the movies. It needs a little bit of time to
mature. It’s like taking the cake out without letting it be in
the oven for more than a minute. Like, oh no, it’s terrible.
So you have to be patient, and then slowly everyone
starts to see that the ideas are right, or make the
corrections. You have to battle the lack of confidence by
giving the scene the chance to solidify “
Francis Ford Coppola on directing and collaborating. UX
FOR STARTUPS
Tim’s talk – was about REM, our is about the mechanics of how to make it happen. Will go into the nuts and bolts. A BOX of tool. Rules of engagementSome key rules for the workshop ( have fun, copy from each other, respect time)This usually takes 2-3 workshop, but crunched to 2hrs. Have to move fastCombined experience in the room – Start ups, and the crewPlan is nothing, planning is everything.
But software, as Kontra points out, is about more than just looks. It's about "the behavioral aspects of application design in general."
Biggest takeaway – UX is not just about getting somebody to quickly build your UI
Hire at least 10% of your engineering workforce. How do you get a good design guy on board.
… But now these big companies have Big design groups, making big investments in designs. They realize the importance of UX to differentiate their products.
Google flight status example…
Dropbox diverted a bulk of their marketing budget ($388 per user) to improving the user experience of their product “we spent almost all our effort on making an elegant simple product that just worked and made users happy”How do you think they got here…
“We don’t want people to remember their interactions with Facebook. “We want them to remember their interactions with their friends and family.” Facebook’s director of design - Kate Aronowitz“As a design guideline, serotonin is our term for those little moments of delight you get on Facebook.” Facebook manager of design, - Julie Zhou
Designers are extremly emotional people… designers connect with a story
Designer hiring process is different than technical hiring process… have to do 3,4,5. Also, ask for help in evaluating a designer as needed
It can add a character and also speak about your brand.
Share the story about hiring interns.
Resume are a good filtering mechanism
In an interview, grill on the portfolio. Why did they take some design decisions… remember, past behavior is a very good prediction of future behavior.
This is where rubber hits the road. Designer may have worked in teams to come up with the design in the portfolio. Through a design test you can find how much do they really know what they can actually do.
This has an equal balance of the UI problem as well as a need based and a behavior change issue.
Hiring a great designer will not only help you with your UI problems but will also bring a fresh way of thinking towards everything your startup does, from your investor pitches, to your office workspace, to how you differentiate through your communications with your ecosystem
The best part about design thinking is that in a sense, design thinking has maintained for a long time what LEAN STARTUPS have reiterated in the past few years. Because Design Thinking is about Keeping It Real! Design thinker’s profile Empathy – imagine the world from multiple perspectives, customer, user, colleagues etc. ( current and prospective). Design solutions for explicit + latent needsIntegrated thinkingOptimismExperimentationCollaborationHow to make design thinking institutionalized in your start upBegin at the beginning – involve design thinkers from the startFactors human needs and behaviorRapid experimentationSeek outside help – look for opportunities to co create with customers and clientsBig and small projects - Expect business units todrive and fund incremental innovation, but bewilling to initiate revolutionary innovationfrom the top.- Design for the cycle - Planassignments so that design thinkers go frominspiration to ideation to implementation.
Visual nature of working – working out loudInfrastructure to influence design thinkingAll startups have ensured, that design is sprinkled across the culture
Visual nature of working – working out loud
UX principle – good UX is good vocabulary…. And the fact this influences, tech + product decisions. This another example of three circles coming together and becomes a part of core values. This is where the brand/ product is being built or broken
Companies that insist on building a world-class infrastructure before shipping a product are doomed to "achieve failure," because they're starved of feedback for too long. On the other hand, companies that take a "just do it" attitude without any process at all are also taking a major gamble.
They always to need to have the bigger picture… is about a differentiator that cant be cloned
Lead users, co creation sessions …. Vuja De versus Deja Vu
400 surveys results
What is the user’s journey through the product?What are the logical and emotional triggers in the journey?What is the product’s story in the mind of the users?