Designing an MVP that works for users (2 and 1/2 hours) @Lean UX NYC 2013

Designing an MVP that works for
your users

Ariadna Font Llitjós

UX Lead & Development Manager
IBM, Big Data

@quicola #LeanUXNYC #LeanUX ariadna.font.cat

Write your expectations for this session

on a sticky

Ariadna Font Llitjós @quicola

The Plan

20 min

Theory

Brief Description of UX techniques

User Research, Scoping, Prototyping and Testing

Practice
2 hours

Focus on delivering an MVP fast with user-driven design

Collaborative design session - Build a Mobile App!


Where are you?

Product dev
No product dev

UX

No UX


Contextual inquiry Collaborative design Inception deck
Sketches
Paper prototype
(CI)
sessions

Usability Testing

(most of this
MVP
Flow diagram

Personas
workshop)

Qualitative

Elevator pitch
Wireframes
Usability Testing
Empathy map
Brainstorming

3 Must have goals
Paper prototype
Quantitative
Stakeholder map
Storyboard

Usability Testing

Flow diagram
Mockups

User Experience Sketchboard

Pair testing
map

Stories
Functional prototype

Controlled
Journey map
Story map
experiments (A/B

Testing)
Heuristic evaluation
“Agile schedule”

Heuristic
Cognitive BDD
evaluation
walkthrough

Cognitive
Benchmarking
walkthrough

Contextual Inquiry (User Research)

First hand observation of how people perform and structure their
work (or any other relevant tasks)

Who does it? UX person or other team member. A pair of
observers is ideal

Key benefits:
•  Best way to understand your users

•  Only way to know what the real work flow/process is (vs the official one)

•  Opportunity to discuss with users what they are doing and why


(Lean) Personas
Characterization of a type of user that we want to target with our
product/application

Who does it? Ideally, UX or somebody who has done some user
research.

Key Beneﬁts:
•  Document user research

•  Remind team of users needs and
motivations (different from managers and buyers)

•  Allow team to ground communication throughout development


Empathy Map

Explore a target user (persona) from different perspectives:
Who am I? Behavior, See –Motivations, Do – Features, Say, Feel

Who does it? The Team

Key Beneﬁts:

•  Very quick way to have a holistic view of your target user

•  Forces you to think about more than their role

•  Allow team to ground communication throughout
development


User experience map

Visual representation of the user workflow for accomplishing a
goal. Key elements include:

•  Questions to signal areas where more information/understanding is needed

•  Comments with known information that clarifies / lends meaning

•  Ideas to illustrate an interesting concept that could enhance a step

Who does it? The team

Key Benefits:
•  Make team’s (lack of) knowledge explicit

•  Good to figure out areas that need (further) user research


Rules for brainstorming

Defer judgment.

Encourage wild ideas.

Build on the ideas of others.

Stay focused on the topic.

Be visual.

One conversation at a time.

Go for quantity.


Storyboard

Use of story telling to quickly visualize/share a solution to speciﬁc
problem making use of personas and their behaviors, stories and
any known constraints.


Key Beneﬁts:
•  Help us think about the problem in a creative way

•  Facilitates focused communication

•  Affordable and easy to do


Sketchboard

It’s like story boarding but with sketches, almost like a biomap of
the system you are building or about to build.

Who does it? Team with UX/designer’s help

Key Beneﬁts:
•  Provides Big Picture using initial design ideas

•  Very iterative and highly collaboratively

•  Very focused requirement discussions


Minimal Viable Product - MVP

•  (First) product version to test our ideas as quickly and cheaply as possible.

•  An MVP has just those features that allow the product to be deployed and
validated, and no more.

•  "The minimum viable product is that version of a new product (or feature) which
allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about
customers with the least effort.”

•  Is not a minimal product, it’s a strategy and process directed towards making
and selling a product to customers.

•  The MVP works together with a build-measure-learn cycle: developing software,
gathering customer feedback, and learning from it.


Elevator Pitch
For [target user] !
who [statement of need or opportunity] !
the [product/app name] is a [product category] !
that [key benefit, compelling reason to buy/use]. !
Unlike [primary competitive alternative] !
our product/app [statement of primary differentiation]!


Key Beneﬁts:
•  Allows team to focus on differentiator feature(s) and direct their energy to
features with the highest business value

•  Quick and inexpensive


3 Must have goals

1.  …

2.  …

3.  …

Anything else goes in the Nice-to-have category.

Good to have a “Will not do/have” category as well.


User stories
Software system requirement formulated in one or two sentences
in everyday or business language that makes explicit the user’s
need. Example:
As a [type of user] !

I want to [perform some task] !

so that I can [reach some goal]!

Who does this? The team (dev, tester, doc or UX)
Key Beneﬁts:
•  Provides a thinking template; token for a conversation

•  Description of why the product needs to do what it does

Flow diagram

Visualize the workflow the user has to follow through the
application to complete a task or achieve a goal.
Can I use it?


Key Benefits:
•  Quick way to run through the system from a user perspective

•  Allows you to identify gaps in your current flow

•  Affordable and easy to do


Wireframes

Grayscale mockups showing layout and position of page elements
(can range from low-ﬁdelity to exact grid-based resolution)

Who does this? Typically UX, designer, but anyone can do it!

Key Beneﬁts:
•  Easiest/cheapest way to realize and test ideas

•  Great to get early feedback

•  Can be done at any stage of development


Paper Prototype


Paper prototype usability testing

Usability testing on paper versions of wireframes or sketches that
users can simulate slicks and talk through their thoughts and
decisions

Who does it? Anyone can do this (be an observer)

Key Beneﬁts:
•  Fastest and cheapest way to validate ideas/assumptions

•  Results can be fed back into the design process
immediately

•  You can do this at any time you are not sure what is the best UI for a speciﬁc
problem


Usability Testing Facilitation 101

•  Give user a specific task. Example: from the homepage, navigate to the
Inspiration Zone and see if there is anything there that you’d like to buy; pretend
there is, buy it.

•  Use the think-out-loud protocol

•  Stay neutral, non-judgmental. The user is never wrong.

We re testing the product, not you

•  Just observe, after stating the task, don’t tell them what to do or how to do it.

•  Create questions that don t bias the responses you hope to get.
•  Biased Q: Was it easy for you to sign up for the product
•  Unbiased Q: Overall please rate how difficult or easy it was to sign up for this
product 1 is difficult, 7 is easy.


To learn more about how to run your own UT…

Read this book


Let s Practice!

Collaborative Design Session


5 min
Form teams of 4-6 people

Introduce yourself (role, something unusual)

You will collaboratively work on:
1.  User Research and Analysis
2.  Scoping
3.  Prototyping
4.  Usability Testing


Challenge

Develop a Mobile App that helps
promote networking and interaction
between all conference attendees


15 min
Contextual Inquiry

• Find a user and try to understand what they would want to do
with this app (examples: check schedule, see how is in what
session, chat with a speaker, rendezvous with random
conference attendee, etc.)

• Have they used such an app before? What did they like/hate
about it? Try to get them to show it to you.

• Observe and take notes


15 min
Empathy Map

Explore multiple dimensions of your target users.

Do as a brainstorming exercise.
Thinks

One idea per sticky.
Hears Sees

Questions:
Feels Says

Who are your users?
Does

What do they need/want?
Pains Gains


Empathy Map Examples


30 min
User experience map

Visual representation of the user workﬂow for a task

Using a user experience map, document:
1.  The steps your user persona follows,
2.  What you know? (comments)
•  Time and frequency of use.
•  Location and physical context.
•  Interactions with people or systems.
•  Terminology and standards.
•  Technical capabilities and limitations.
3.  What don’t know about them (questions)

User Experience Map Examples


UX Map - Covering up the Questions

• Talk to domain experts

• Interview more users

• Watch users in their environment

• …


10 min
Elevator Pitch

Create an elevator pitch to deﬁne what should be
your MVP functionality.

Question:
What do users want to do with the app?
What’s our business proposition and the value
added?
(MUST haves vs NICE to haves)

Elevator Pitch

For
[target user]
who
[statement of need or opportunity]
the

[product/app name] is a [product category]
that

[key beneﬁt, compelling reason to buy/use].

Unlike
[primary competitive alternative]

our product/app

[statement of primary differentiation]

!

20 min
Paper prototyping

Now, pick a technique and apply it to design your
killer feature (differentiator).

You can use a ﬂow diagram or other paper artifact
that you can use to do UT with.

Question:
Can I use it?


10 min
Guerrilla Usability Testing

Now let s test your paper prototype!

Question:
Can somebody outside your team use it?
•  Do they know what they can do? and how to
do it?
•  Are there any big usability issues that would
prevent your MVP from being broadly adopted?


How did that go?

What happened?

Teams
Could your user ﬁnish the task you had

designed?

Users
Could you use the prototype?

Would you buy it?

Did the team do a good job at facilitating?


Did we achieve the session’s goals?


Did we achieve the session’s goals?

Did it meet your expectations?


+ & −

+ What was your favorite part of the session?

Did you have any a-ha moments?

Will you be able to take something you learned in this
session back to your work/life? (if so, what?)

− What was your least favorite part?

What could be improved?

Would make it for a better learning experience for you?


QUESTIONS?


THANKS!

Ariadna Font Llitjós @quicola #LeanUXNYC ariadna.font.cat

Designing an MVP that works for users (2 and 1/2 hours) @Lean UX NYC 2013

More Related Content

What's hot

Similar to Designing an MVP that works for users (2 and 1/2 hours) @Lean UX NYC 2013

More from Ariadna Font Llitjos

Recently uploaded

Designing an MVP that works for users (2 and 1/2 hours) @Lean UX NYC 2013