The
Collaborative
UX Designer’s
Toolbox
#UXLondon
May 30, 2014
@thinknow
Lane Halley
lane@lanehalley.com
@thinknow
@thinknow
• Stimulate necessary conversations
• Advance with a shared vision
• Create engaged teams
• Generate trust
• Cultivate a culture of learning
How can we...?
@thinknow
Who are you? What’s
your work context?
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Agency
Enterprise
Startup
Coach
Small team
Distributed
Large team
Freelance
Co-located Enterprise
Work contexts
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What are the qualities of
satisfying work?
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Trust Ownership
Creativity
Empathy
Fun
Empowerment
Flow
Communication
Productivity
Satisfying Work
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Good work comes from
good teams
Good teams collaborate
effectively
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What are the challenges
of collaborative design?
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Attention Distance
Time pressure
HiPPO
Confusion
Ego
Changing mandate
Lack of ownership
Silos
Collaboration Challenges
Lack of information
@thinknow
The way we
work now
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“Software is
eating the world.”
Marc Andreessen
photo: Peter DaSilva
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• More businesses moving online
• Broadband internet
• Connected devices (smartphones)
• Low start up costs
A digitally wired global economy
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Design Thinking
empathy, creativity and rationality
Agile Development
self-organizing teams, quality code, iterative &
incremental delivery
Lean Startup
products people want, learning experiments
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Design Thinking
diverge converge diverge converge
interpret ideatediscover evolveexperiment
@thinknowImage credit: http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/
Agile Development (Scrum)
@thinknowRedrawn from http://theleanstartup.com/principles
Lean Startup Cycle
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Learning experiments
Iterative design & delivery
Collaborative teams
different patterns of generalists and specialists
Customer information
rich information about customer behavior
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Learning experiments
TEST WITH USERS
DEFINE EXPERIMENT
prototype
observations and metrics
oppportunity statement
DECLARE ASSUMPTIONS
MetricsSolution
persona
UserProblem
REVISEREVISE
@thinknowPhotos: Carbon Five, LUXr
Collaborative teams
@thinknow
Customer information
Adapted from work by: @clevergirl, @luxrco
quantitative qualitative
generative
evaluative
Optimizely
Analytics
A/B Metrics
Pirate Metrics
Support tickets
Surveys
Net promoter score Starbucks
Interviews
Contextual
Inquiry
Hallway usability
five users on friday
usability lab
@thinknow
• Huge, connected device landscape
• Every company is a digital company
• We create businesses, not just SW
• A good user experience must span all
touchpoints
A great opportunity for UX
@thinknow
User advocate
Strategist
Design advocate
Facilitator
Synthesizer
The UX Designer’s Role
Problem-solver
Maker
Generator
Trainer
Conscience
@thinknow
“Do what you do now,
but do less of it and do
it continually.”
@williampietri
@thinknow
Quick, Visual,
Collaborative
& Continuous
@thinknow
Why document our
design ideas?
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Memory
So we get paid
Raise money
Distributed team
Feedback
Prove we did it
Large team
Milestones
Coders not hired yetEnforces clarity
Reasons to document
@thinknow
If documents are a
necessary evil, make
them work for you
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Focus on outcome
instead of output
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Help the team
understand “who”
“what” and “why”
@thinknow
Your goal is alignment
PEOPLE
USES
FEATURES
NEEDS people
product
BUSINESS
	
  OPPORTUNITY
@thinknow
Good documents
visualize the team’s
shared understanding
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storyboards,	
  
wireframes,	
  
visual	
  design
journey	
  maps
Artifacts document shared beliefs
personas,
scenarios
opportunity	
  statement,
hypothesis,
business	
  canvas
user	
  stories
PEOPLE
USES
FEATURES
NEEDS
BUSINESS
	
  OPPORTUNITY
@thinknow
Lead with conversation,
trail with documentation
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Lowest responsible fidelity
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What is “enough time?”
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• User Research
• Personas
• Interaction flow
• Screen design
• Visual look
• User testing
1 week
@thinknow
• User Research
• Personas
• Interaction flow
• Screen design
• Visual look
• User testing
1 day
@thinknow
• User Research
• Personas
• Interaction flow
• Screen design
• Visual look
• User testing
1 hour
UX Recipes
@thinknow
• Persona 4x4
• Opportunity statement
• Six-ups
• Project brief
• Wireframe walkthrough
• Customer conversations
A few of my favorite recipes
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Let’s use some of
these recipes on a
sample project
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Activity:
pick an idea
@thinknowbit.ly/idea-mixer
@thinknow
Activity:
persona 4x4
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Activity:
opportunity statement
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Activity:
pick a key interaction
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Why will your persona
love this solution?
What’s a big pain
point you can solve?
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Activity:
sketch the UI
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Activity:
wireframe walkthrough
@thinknowThanks @davehendee, @carbonfive, @originate
Wireframe Walkthrough
WHAT
• Collaborative design critique
• Build team consensus
• Understand trade-offs
HOW
• Post sketches on the wall
• Tell a story
• “What happens when...”
• Annotate and add stickies
@thinknow
Putting it all together:
Wheel Nice Guys
@thinknow
Picking the right tool for the job
Question
What’s the objective?
What might we do?
How is this going to work?
Where do we start?
How do we build it?
Does it work?
Activity
Opportunity statement, persona 4x4, project
brief, conversation guide
Six-ups, dot-voting, scenarios, storyboards,
experience map
Layouts, sketches, wireframe walkthrough
Prototype, experiment, MVP
User stories, Story map
Hallway usability, five on friday, rainbow
spreadsheet
@thinknow
Create a shared vision
opportunity statement (hypothesis)
persona 4x4
six-ups
conversation guide
@thinknow
Opportunity statement
Problem: Custom bike shoppers find it difficult and
time-consuming to learn about options, configure and
price the bike they want to buy.
Solution: A Web application that lets custom bike
shoppers explore different components, envision
different combinations and dynamically understand price.
@thinknow
persona 4x4
create provisional personas
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six-up
draw and discuss six-ups
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conversation guide
plan customer conversations
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Set a course
dot voting
project brief
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dot vote ideas to explore
dot voting
@thinknowAdapted from @jmspool: http://www.uie.com/articles/short_form_creative_brief/
last updated
opportunity
persona(s)
scenarios
metrics
create a project brief
@thinknow
Just in time design
scenario
UI elements and layouts
thumbnails
live style guide
@thinknow
Peter explores bike profiles on the CHOOSE BIKE PAGE
Sees info about what he can do here
Sees multiple bike images w/ basic info & price
Uses controls to pan through them
Chooses a bike to see in more detail
Peter sees the bike he picked on the CONFIGURE BIKE PAGE
Sees large image of bike he chose
Sees list of parts with info and prices
Sees the total price
etc...
create a scenario
@thinknow
Peter explores bike profiles on the CHOOSE BIKE PAGE
Sees info about what he can do here [Content box]
Sees multiple bike images w/ basic info & price [Carousel]
Uses controls to pan through them [Carousel]
Chooses a bike to see in more detail [Carousel]
Peter sees the bike he picked on the CONFIGURE BIKE PAGE
Sees large image of bike he chose [Bike config picture]
Sees list of parts with info and prices [Bike config list]
Sees the total price [Bike config list]
etc...
name the UI elements
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Header
Talk to us
Marketing message(s)
Bike images
Bike config picture
Bike config list
Footer
organize elements & layouts
@thinknow
sketch interactions
@thinknow
UI elements Responsive layouts
plan page layouts
@thinknow
Live style guide
• Describes typography, colors,
patterns and widgets
• System-of-record for front-end of
patterns and styles
• Code examples to help engineers to
implement quickly and accurately
Thanks @wardpenny
@thinknow
From design to code
wireframe walkthrough
1-week experiment
user stories
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wirefame walkthrough
@thinknow
1-week experiment
@thinknow
user stories
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Learn and reflect
five on friday
project cadence
@thinknow
five on friday
Photo: www.flickr.com/photos/mr_t_in_dc/7772899182/
@thinknow
Monday
APRIL
MAY
week 18
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
reflect & define
specify
build & refine
build & refine
customer feedback
Credit: @chemphill, @carbonfive
project cadence
@thinknow
• Stimulate necessary conversations
• Advance with a shared vision
• Create engaged teams
• Generate trust
• Cultivate a culture of learning
Now you know how to...
@thinknow
Zeitgeist
@chemphill @clevergirl @davidhussman
@dhendee @Jboogie @jeffpaton
@jmspool @jseiden @katerutter
@mralancooper
and everyone at @balancedteam
@thinknow
Lane Halley
lane@lanehalley.com
THANK YOU
@thinknow

The Collaborative UX Designer's Toolbox