LUXi lean ux intensive, designer edition

Lean User Experience
Intensive
Designer Edition

Janice Fraser Tim McCoy
Director, Integrated
Founder/CEO
Product Development
LUXr
Cooper
janice@LUXr.co
tim@cooper.com
@luxrco
@seriouslynow
@clevergirl

Tim, introduce
yourself.

LEAN UX INTENSIVE, DESIGNER EDITION 01/2011 JANICE@LUXR.CO TIM@COOPER.COM

Now janice’s turn.


Ok. Now you.


Today: 3 Chunks
1: What other people have ﬁgured out
Lean Startup, Agile

2: What we think we have ﬁgured out
Product Stewardship, Lean UX

3: Reimagining UX Practice
Validation, Project Plans


Tomorrow

Use Lean UX framework in
hands-on mini project with
Change.org.


Daily Routine
9:00 Start
10:30 Break

12:00 Lunch (on your own)

1:00 Resume
2:30 Break

5:00 Done


Now that’s out of the way...onto our ﬁrst
chunk:

“Stuff other people have ﬁgured out”


Steve Blank introduced “Customer
Development” in...um...2006.
The 2nd/3rd edition is (c) 2006. The idea goes back
perhaps a decade before that.


In 2010, Brant Cooper and
Patrick Vlaskovitz wrote a
shorter, better book.


About 1,720,000 results


Here’s my distillation...

“Customer Development in One Page”


LEAN UX INTENSIVE, NOV 2010 JANICE@LUXR.CO

People, their
goals & needs

Sketches and
prototypes

“New user”
experiences

CUSTOMER DEVELOPMENT = UX!!?

Get out of the
building!


For the ﬁrst time,
user-centered design
methods have
momentum in the
business community.


What opportunities
does that afford us?

What demands does it
place on us?


+ +

make products
incremental
customers reduce waste
releases
want


41,000 views
(past 12 mos)

17,741 followers
(1,738 listed)

Entrepreneur in
Residence
(2010-2011)

Fall 2011
(Random House)

When the science of startups
includes User Centered Design as
one of its tent-poles, then we
designers have a new opportunity
to do great things.


Validated Learning
Reducing cycle time, rather than building fast


Velocity

Agile Sprints Points
Iterations
Only p
art
the sto of
Continuous Deployment ry!

Lean Cycles Reduce
cycle t
ime
not bu ,
Generative Research ild
Ideation
Mental models
THINK time

Behavior Models
Test Results
Competitive Analysis

MAKE Prototypes
Wireframes
Value Prop
Landing Page
Hypotheses
Comps
A/B Testing
Deployed Code
Site Analytics
Usability Testing
Funnel
Sign-ups CHECK

What we bring is 10* years of
experience, methods, and
methodology

*20, 30, 50 years

The LEAN part:
A word about INVENTORY buildup and WASTE

...ho w long?
uch time? Nobody
Like this... ...how m clicked.
. ..effort?

TIME

3 months
Make a Discover
design that it
decision 3 hours wasn’t right


When* the business community
begins to measure the value of
user experience, they will invest in
it as a driver of value, rather than
a cost to be minimized.

*Note Bene: “When” is now. [high ﬁve your neighbor]

Tell the apple 90% story.


Lean means...
• Keep your inventory low.
• Talk to your customers.
• Make something they want.
• Prove your ideas and your interfaces.


How do you do good user experience
work in a lean environment?

PROVE IMPROVE

LEAN UX INTENSIVE, DESIGNER EDITION 01/2011
NOV 2010 JANICE@LUXR.CO TIM@COOPER.COM
JANICE@LUXR.CO

Agile fundamentals


The Manifesto for Agile Software Development

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and
helping others do it.

Through this work we have come to value:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items
on the left more.


Agile values

• Transparency • Simplicity
• Shared responsibility • Continuous improvement
• Adaptability


Agile characteristics

• Cross-functional teams
• Open, collaborative environments
• Break down work to small, digestible chunks
• Conversation replaces detailed documentation
• Bias against front-loaded engineering & design
• Focus on “customer value,”
“business value”
• Rapid, incremental delivery


Elements of an agile process

• Visioning / Inception • Demonstration / acceptance
• Story / task generation and • Daily stand-up
estimation • Retrospectives
• Release planning • Physical or virtual project
• Sprint / iteration planning tracking

Roles in agile teams

Scrum XP
• Product owner • Customer
• Scrum Master • Tracker
• Technical lead • Programmers
• Business analyst (SME) • Testers
• Developers • Coach
• Testers
• Coach

Agile practices you should care about

• Test-Driven Development • Continuous deployment
• Functional tests • Refactoring
• Pair programming


Fishbowl


Product Stewardship
and the integrated team
The role of UX in agile environments

Some awesome team diagrams

45

What’s wrong with this picture?


Product Owner is an overloaded role

• Represent business needs • Collaborate with the team
– hold product vision – maintain product backlog
– feature deﬁnition and prioritization – detail / clarify requirements
– communicate project status – provide subject matter expertise
• Ensure project success – be voice of the user
– negotiate release dates and contents – participate in daily meetings
– manage proﬁtability / ROI – review work results


Strategic and tactical UX are under-represented

• Product vision and framework under-developed
• User research and feedback not well done or understood
• Good interaction design practices lacking
• Design professionals spread too thin


Problems we can address by integrating design

Too up-front Too late
• Too many assumptions • Not cohesive
• Can’t address changes • Never enough time
• Time-intensive • Lipstick on a pig
documentation

We begin by integrating design into the team

The Integrated Team includes
full-time design members working
with and alongside developers.

• Research and analysis of customer
and user behaviors, needs, and
goals
• Contextual design that balances
business needs, user goals,
technical opportunity

50

A Product Steward advocates for UX
The Product Steward is a strategic
design role that works with the
Product Mgr to set direction and
shepherd the product to success.

• Advocate for user-centered design
• Understand and represent user goals
• Provide creative direction
• Negotiate releases with Product Manager
• Pair-design with other team members
• Assess work results
• Guide product vision through delivery


Product Ownership is a shared responsibility
Product Manager
• Represent business and customer needs
• Understand market opportunities
• Communicate project status
• Prioritize features and releases
• Collaborate with team

Product Steward
• Represent user needs and goals
• Manage product vision, framework
• Provide creative direction
• Collaborate with team


Lean User Experience
Fundamentals


Lean User Experience is a cross-
functional, principle-driven process
characterized by rituals that predispose
teams to predictable, high-quality, high-
velocity user experience outcomes.


What are the principles?
1. Design + product management + development = 1 product team

2. Externalize

3. Research with users is the best source of information

4. Focus on solving the right problem

5. Generate many options and decide quickly which to pursue

6. Recognize hypotheses & validate them

7. Rapid cycles: think/make/check


Lean UX process
Users

1. BLAH

why
Needs 2. BLAH
3. BLAH
le
what peop
how uct
prod
(INSERT BUSINESS THINKING HERE)
Bob can...

Uses

Features
(CREATE SKETCHES, WIREFRAMES
& PIXELS)
This Week

User Stories
Themed Releases

Lean UX methods are

Lightweight
Low-Fi
Lo-Tech
External
Face to Face
Collaborative
Generative and Decisive
Fast
Repeatable
Routinized
Goal Driven
Outcome Focused


The UX ﬁeld has Pyramid
ABSTRACT CONCEPTS

loads of methods Sticky Strategy
Ecosystem Map
strategy
that will work lean. Personas (scenarios)
Design Target
user
(plus a few of my own making)
6-Up Sketching
Activity Map
Story Boards
uses
Sticky Triage
Story Mapping feature planning
Iteration Planning

2 or 3-Up Sketching
Test Creation
Wireframes
Card Sorting
IA, IxD, UI
Black Hat Session

Sketch Boards
Prototyping (many kinds)
Greyboxing detail design
Pair Production/Design

Design Bible
Pattern Libraries
Housecleaning
cohesiveness
WORKING SOFTWARE

We also have methods to “get out of the building.”

CUSTOMER DEVELOPMENT

Listen (talk*) to people**
Surveys generative
Watch people use
competitors

Customer acceptance testing
with paper prototypes
Card sorting evolutionary
Usability testing

Usertesting.com
Behavioral metrics
A/B testing
quantitative
Heat mapping

OPTIMIZATION

** WHO? People who match your design target
* ABOUT WHAT? What they do, what their life is like, what they use, what
their problems are, how they meet their needs now?

Rituals for lean product teams
ABSTRACT CONCEPTS

Write the “test” ﬁrst*
User need/quote as sprint name ideate

Wireframe check
Pairing
communicate

Retrospective learn
Measure
Redo improve
Housecleaning
WORKING SOFTWARE

* Most important thing for the problem owner is to deﬁne and own the problem.

Activity
Map out for the design process you used for
a recent project. Where were you working
with unvalidated hypotheses?


Activity questions

• How did you know your hypothesis was
right? (what qualiﬁes as validation?)

• Are stakeholders and SME’s validation?
• Invalidated vs unvalidated?
• What are some approaches you might take
to shorten the cycle between hypothesis
and validation?


Activity observations
What is a hypothesis?

it’s not “facts” but is “good information”

raw observation to FORM hypotheses

it’s not build-measure-learn, it’s learn-build-measure

getting out of the building doesn’t have to stop once development begins

As an agency, when you validate with client stakeholders you satisfy THEM (and get paid)

If you validate with end users you may NOT satisfy your client, and they’re paying you…

THIS CLIENT DYNAMIC MUST FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGE TO BE SUSTAINABLE

validate your product to your customer (scoping the consulting relationship)

validate THEIR product to THEIR customer


Validation...


Um.


PROPOSAL
Web portal for freelance traveling nurses and
their recruiters

An exercise in Lean UX
approaches to project planning

Project environment

Many nurses at most hospitals are freelancers on 13 week contracts
who travel from job to job in search of personal adventure, good
pay, and professional opportunity.

Our company has relationships with hospitals to post jobs and
relationships with nurses to ﬁll them.

We plan to replace our mix of thick client apps and web forms with
a fully-web based system that gives our nurses better ways to guide
their experience and our recruiters better tools to manage their
relationships.


Project objectives

Help nurses: Help recruiters:
• search for jobs • match nurses to jobs
• apply for jobs • ﬁll high-value jobs
• work with their recruiters to • work with nurses to land jobs
land jobs • manage their stable of nurses
• ﬁnd temporary housing at
job location
• connect with other traveling
nurses
• access HR and career
management information


How it’s done, old school

Research &  Detailed Design 
Framework Development ‐‐>
Modeling & SpeciﬁcaMon

Months 1                2                 3                 4                  5                  6                  7                  8

R1 alpha R1 beta R1 release R2 alpha etc...

9               10              11                12               13               14                15               16


Exercise objectives

Envision a plan using Lean UX practices and agile methods.
Your approach should seek to:

• Minimize wasted time and effort
• Identify most valuable opportunities
• Learn from user feedback and behavior
• Reduce cycle time between posing a hypothesis and validating it

CAVEAT

Don’t short change the research and vision, they’re vital to
understanding the business and their users so you can affect
signiﬁcant change.

Final thoughts.


See you here at 9am.


LUXi lean ux intensive, designer edition

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