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@ncapuana@ncapuana
UX survival
guide
by Nicole Capuana

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@ncapuana
Once upon a time
in a kingdom of robots....

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@ncapuana
Hello!
● Director of User Experience at LeanDog
● Founding member of HER Ideas in Motion, a
non-profit teaching girls how to code,
design games, & build robots
● Organizer of Cleveland Lean Startup Circle
● Over 15 years in UX covering the whole
spectrum - HTML/CSS. interaction design,
visual design, information architecture, user
research, usability & content strategy

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@ncapuana
Saint Possum
● Agile maximizing value,
maximizing feedback, and
embracing change.
● Lean minimizing waste,
validating or invalidating
assumptions, learning and
adapting to deliver value
incrementally.
● UX everything your users
experience

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@ncapuana
UX is part of the team
● Team member
● More than wireframes or mockups
● From beginning to end
● Stories, chores, and refactoring just
like development
If you don’t have UX on the team,
you need to get them
Lesson 1
● Dedicated
ideal
● 2 projects
max

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@ncapuana
strategy & vision before development
● Allows exploration,
experimentation
● View of the whole
● Supports business
case & telling story
● Defines scope
● UX led, design
spikes
● Good, Better, Best
mentality
Lesson 2

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@ncapuana
Make UX Work Visible
● Represent UX work in release
plan & backlog
● Design spikes, chores, & cards
● Estimation is on par with Dev
● Put your work up on the wall
● Share your work with tools like
InvisionApp and Zeplin
Lesson 3

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@ncapuana
Pair on Everything
● Cross-functional powers
● Shared understanding
● Cross-pollination
● You do better work, faster
● Promotes a whole team
mindset
Lesson 4

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@ncapuana
Be a Balanced Team
● High
collaboration
● Skills not roles
● Assess
desirability,
feasibility &
usability
together
Lesson 5
● Find better ways
to work
● Make a happy team

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@ncapuana
Find Your Balance
● Let ego go
● Let it go
● Small, imperfect, but
deliverable (varying
levels of fidelity)
● Expand your skills
(test, write stories)
Lesson 6
● May feel
uncomfortable at first
● There’s always more
to do

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@ncapuana
Test Early & Often
● Test the riskiest, the
most valuable
● Build on the best
practices so you don’t
have to test everything
● Embrace Test-Driven
Design
● Make data informed
decisions
● 10x, 100x, 1000x
Lesson 7
● Get it in your user's’ hands ASAP
● Design incrementally in thin slices

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@ncapuana
There Will Be DeBt
● Issues will be found once
you start implementing or
building
● Connecting towards the
whole can reveal spots that
no longer work well
Lesson 8
● Help team prioritize the
most valuable or severe
first

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@ncapuana
Don’t Fall into TRaps● No UX
● Playing
catch-up
● Working in
silos or alone
● Mockup every
screen in
Photoshop
● No time for users
● Accepting status-quo
● Not embracing change
● Non designers
designing
● “I just know what
they want”

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@ncapuana
You Can Do It
● Don’t look back
● Make do with what you
got and take a step to
change

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@ncapuana
You asked - additional readings
Books
● Don’t Make Me Think AND Rocket Surgery Made Easy, Steve Krug
● The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web and Beyond, Jesse James Garrett
● Universal Methods of Design: 100 Ways to Research Complex Problems, Develop Innovative Ideas, and Design Effective
Solutions Bella Martin, Bruce M. Hanington
● Agile Experience Design: A Digital Designer's Guide to Agile, Lean, and Continuous Lindsay Ratcliffe, Marc McNeill
● Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience Jeff Gothelf, Josh Seiden
A fantastic and comprehensive list - The Only UX Reading List
Design Studio Method
● Todd Zaki Warfel (video)
● Design Studio: A Method for Concepting,
● Critique & Iteration
● Speed Design Studio -
● Design Studio for context-aware products
● Introduction to Design Studio Methodology
● Design of Design Studio
● Design Studio and Agile UX Process and Pitfalls