Lean UX

1. Lean UX
How to integrate UX design into an Agile Development Environment

2. Content!
1. Three foundations of Lean UX!
2. Core Principles!
3. The Process!
i. Step 0: Preparation!
ii. Step 1A: Declare Assumptions!
iii. Step 1B: Initial Understanding!
iv. Step 2: Create an MVP!
v. Step 3: Run an Experiment!
vi. Step 4: Feedback and Research!
vii. Building Lean UX into Agile/Scrum!
4. Summary

3. Three foundations of Lean UX!
1. Design Thinking: thinks like a designer, drive the business direction by
observing what people want and need, like or dislike and refine accordingly
2. Agile Software Development: Lean UX applies the four core principles of
Agile development
i. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
ii. Working software over comprehensive documentation
iii. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
iv. Responding to change over following a plan
3. Lean Startup Methods: build the Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) for rapid
learning of market response
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4. Core Principles!
1. Build a Small, Colocated & Cross-functional Teams: build a team of less than 10 core people,
everyone is engaged in every step for team efficiency, team work is highly valued, lessons learned in
a collective manner with the team as a whole, the deeper into the process, the better the team at
guessing what the market actually needs.
2. User-Centered Design Process: get feedback from real users as a way of learning, ideas and
designs are tested against real users for new discovery and refinement, ideas can be proved first
before scaling.
3. Lightweight and Fast Actions: the team should try to use the shortest duration to build products
(MVP) for testing, the more the testing, the faster to find the right direction.
4. Performance is Assessed by Output Outcomes: teams are assigned problems instead of output
specifications, they are given the free hand to try different solutions for maximum impact, outcomes
are business goals (like increased conversion rate), the team must be safe to fail which can breed a
culture of experimentation.
5. Designers should Work in Small Steps: resources are scarce, designers should laser focus on the
most important tasks by creating designs that are crucial for the current MVPs and avoid presenting a
large-batch polished design upfront, designers should also use sketches and wireframe to discuss
their ideas early in the design process before building the design.
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5. The Process!
The above steps describes a typical cycle of formulating
assumptions, building, testing and learning.
Lean UX is a discovery process. User feedback is
collected, analysed and utilised continually throughout
the whole design/development process.
Declare
Assumptions /
Initial
Understanding
Create an!
MVP
Run an!
Experiment
Feedback!
and!
Research
1 2 3 4
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6. Step 0: Preparation!
• Build a measurement system (e.g. digital analytics) into the
current service/product to collect data for benchmarking
• Define and prfioritize the personas for the service/product,
personas represents the typical users (maybe up to 10
personas with 1-2 primary personas), personas must be
derived from actual user profiles but given fictitious details
(name, age, photo, occupation, needs and problems with the
service/product)
• Create and maintain a style guide which contains the most
updated design components and patterns ever used (e.g.
buttons, graphs, navigations, forms), usually with sample code
and style. Updates should be communicated to all users.
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7. Step 1A: Declare Assumptions!
Lean UX is concerned about testing and learning. We
have to test the validity of hypotheses and make
adjustments accordingly.
Who: All team members
What: Create and prioritize the problem statements
(goals, a current problem and an explicit request) and
test with hypotheses statements.
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8. Step 1A: Declare Assumptions!
An example of problem statement:
[Our service/product] was designed to achieve [goals].
We have observed that the service/product isn’t meeting
[these goals], which is causing [this adverse effect] to
our business. How might we improve [service/product]
so that our customers are more successful based on
[these measurable criteria]?
!
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9. Step 1A: Declare Assumptions!
An example of hypotheses statement:
We believe [doing this] for [these personas] will
achieve [this outcome].
We will know we’re [right/wrong] with [qualitative
feedback/quantitative feedback/KPI changes].
!
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10. Step 1B: Initial Understanding!
Goal: Mutual understanding between all members, in
particular designers and developers, is crucial.
Who: All team members
What: The designer leads a meeting with all team
members to discuss and come to agreement with some
initial ideas to the problem. The meeting can be in the
form of stand-up meeting or design studios (everyone
brainstorm, discuss and choose the initial solution by
consensus) by using low fidelity sketches on whiteboard
or paper.
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11. Step 2: Create an MVP!
Goal: MVP stands for Minimum Viable Products. They
are not the finished marketable products but rather
complete products ready for testing.
Who: Designers and/or developers
What: Decide what to learn and how to learn the
quickest. Define the signals/metrics in advance. Since
we are mostly concerned about testing and learning in
this stage, the MVPs can range from low-fidelity
prototypes, high-fidelity mockups to fully functional
demos as long as they serve the purpose.
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12. Step 3: Run an Experiment!
It’s show time.
Who: Designated Testers and/or The Team
What: Ask people come to your place to test out the
new features or bring the product/service to places with
your defined personas.
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13. Step 4: Feedback and Research!
While the primary feedback is collected from field
testing of the MVPs, more feedback can be found in on-
site search data, third party review sites, customer
service calls, enquiry emails, and from the social media
networks.
Who: The Team
What: To make sense of the feedback by i) looking for
patterns, ii) finding an explanation for outliers, iii)
double verify the patterns with other sources.
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14. Typically, Scrum employs a 2 week sprints model.
Several related sprints may be grouped into a theme.
Declare Run an experiment (Step 3) and Feedback and
Research (Step 4) can be added to each sprint with a
“3-12-1″ cycle (3 users, by 12 noon, 1 a week)
Building Lean UX into Agile/Scrum!
2 Week Sprint
Step 1 IPM Step 3/4
2 Week Sprint
Step 1 IPM Step 3/4
2 Week Sprint
Step 1 IPM Step 3/4
Theme
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15. Building Lean UX into Agile/Scrum!
Typically, Scrum employs a 2 week sprints model.
Several related sprints may be grouped into a theme.
Declare Run an experiment (Step 3) and Feedback and
Research (Step 4) can be added to each sprint with a
“3-12-1″ cycle (3 users, by 12 noon, 1 a week)
2 Week Sprint
Step 1 IPM Step 3/4
2 Week Sprint
Step 1 IPM Step 3/4
2 Week Sprint
Step 1 IPM Step 3/4
Theme
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16. !
Run an experiment (Step 3) and Feedback and
Research (Step 4) can be added to each sprint with a
“3-12-1″ cycle (3 users, by 12 noon, 1 a week)
Building Lean UX into Agile/Scrum!
Recruit test subject!
!
Decide what will be
tested
Refine what will be
tested
Testing day!
!
Review findings
with entire team
Plan next step
based on findings
Mon Tue Web Thur Fri
Refine what will be
tested!
!
Write the test script!
!
Finalised recruiting
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17. Wrap Up
1. The whole team should know what problem we’re solving!
2. The whole team should know what success looks like!
3. Always seek the simplest solution
4. Always ask why. Question, don’t just accept
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18. Useful Link
1. The Lean UX Manifesto: Principle-Driven Design
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/01/08/lean-ux-
manifesto-principle-driven-design/
2. Using Proto-Personas for Executive Alignment
http://uxmag.com/articles/using-proto-personas-for-
executive-alignment
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