presented at Spotlight UX/UI on May 10, 2018 More info at http://fitc.ca/event/uxui2018/ Hypothesis Driven Design: Get Experimental by Leslie Predy, Autodesk Overview What could put your project at risk of failing? Do you (or other stakeholders) have assumptions that are wrong but go unchallenged until the actual project delivery? Validating your assumptions early ensures you’re designing and building the right thing. What’s an easy way to do this? Think back to high school science class–you can create a hypothesis, test it, and learn from it! Hypothesis driven design has its roots in the scientific method, but is being used more frequently in design practice, playing a key role in methods such as Lean UX. This talk will go over how to get started with design hypotheses, and its benefits. Objective Attendees should walk away with an understanding of hypothesis driven design, and how it can benefit their design work. Target Audience Designers/developers/product managers interested in finding out if their assumptions are right or wrong. Five Things Audience Members Will Learn How to identify the assumptions that your design is based on How to define a hypothesis Methods to test your hypothesis How to apply the findings to make your designs more awesome Case studies and strategies

1. Hypothesis Driven Design:
Get Experimental
FITC Spotlight UI/UX 2018
Leslie Predy

2. About me

3. About me

4. In this talk
• Background
• Why you should use hypothesis driven design
• When a hypothesis is useful
• How to define and test a hypothesis
• Takeaways

5. The problem with many startups is that you spend months or years doing
research, writing requirements, designing and building software…
…and discover no customer or user cares.
—Will Evans

6. Traditional Product Development
Will Evans

7. Example: Microsoft Bob

8. Lean UX
Jeff Gothelf

9. Scientific Method

10. It’s not scary!

11. Design Hypothesis
Take an assumption that your concept or design is based on,
something that you believe to be true. Phrase it in a way that allows it
to be proven or disproven using research or experiments.
The results of these experiments will tell you whether understand your
user’s behavior and the potential or the pitfalls of your concept.
What is a design hypothesis?

12. Scientific Method

13. Collaborative
• Shared understanding of goals
• Get cross functional team buy in
Evidence based
• Informed insights back up your design decisions and roadmap
Holistic
• Give structure to design explorations
• Quick validation of concepts
Why use design hypotheses?

14. When to use design hypotheses
UK Design Council

15. Double Diamond
Is the concept right? Is the solution right?

16. How To Create Your Hypothesis

17. Identifying Assumptions

18. Assumptions
Have a post it party
• Engage with your team
• Identify the 4Ws
• Who, what, where, why

19. We believe that [creating this experience] for [this persona]
Will achieve [desired outcome].
We will know our hypothesis is valid if [measurable metric].
Writing a hypothesis
Furthermore Design

20. We believe that having lists of verified hosts for potential renters will
make skeptical renters more likely to book.
We will know our hypothesis is valid:
• If potential renters choose verified hosts over (equivalent) other
hosts for 60% of their bookings.
• If over 50% of undecided renters say they are willing to book with a
verified host.
Vacation Rental App
Example

21. We believe that having lists of verified hosts for renters will make
renters feel more comfortable about their stay.
We will know our hypothesis is valid if over 80% of renters say their
stay was a positive experience and accurate with the listing.
Vacation Rental App
Example

22. Test Your Hypothesis

23. What type data do you need?

24. Qualitative: Interviews
• Face to face interviews
• Journey mapping
• Co-creation

25. Qualitative: Observation
Prototypes
Low Fidelity
• Paper prototype
• Test concepts quickly
• No coding
Medium Fidelity
• Invision, Axure, Principle, etc.
• Test interactions
• Validate workflows

26. Quantitative
Analytics
• Surveys
• Usage data & metrics
• Mixpanel, Fullstory, etc.

27. We believe that having lists of verified hosts for potential renters will
make skeptical renters more likely to book.
We will know our hypothesis is valid:
• If potential renters choose verified hosts over (equivalent) other
hosts for 60% of their bookings.
• If over 50% of undecided renters say they are willing to book with a
verified host.
Vacation Rental App
Example

28. We believe that having lists of verified hosts for renters will make
renters feel more comfortable about their stay.
We will know our hypothesis is valid if over 80% of renters say their
stay was a positive experience and accurate with the listing.
Vacation Rental App
Example

29. Autodesk Fusion Production

30. Autodesk Fusion Production

31. Return on research
Adapted from Jakob Nielsen

32. Return on research
No research = no insights

33. Learn & Improve
• Your metric may be wrong
• Refine your experiment
• Your hypothesis may be false
• Be prepared to change direction
• Failure is an important part of learning
• Value the gap: ask more questions
Analyze & Refine

34. There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are
known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know.
But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we
don't know.
—Donald Rumsfeld

35. Be mindful:
• You will never know with certainty how your product will be used
unless you build it
• It’s hard to pick up on weak signals
• The longer you spend on a design, the less likely you’ll be to discard it
• Keep it lean—test often and make it easy so you can experiment
• Don’t stifle creativity, but verify your decisions
Takeaways

36. Questions?
twitter.com/lpredster
linkedin.com/in/lesliepredy
Thank You