2. WILL EVANS
Design Thinker-in-Residence
NYU Stern School of Management
Will.Evans@PraxisFlow.com
@semanticwill

3. "My propositions serve as elucidations in the
following way: anyone who understands me
eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he
has used them - as steps - to climb beyond them.
He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he
has climbed up it.”
- Wittgenstein

4. “All models are lies,
but some models are skillful.”

5. TRADITIONAL PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

6. TRADITIONAL PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

7. WHAT IS LEAN STARTUP?
A post-positivist apologetics of a “movement”

10. 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.

12. It Started With a Question
If startups fail from a lack of customers not
product development failure…
Then why do we have:
• A process for product development?
• No process for customer development?

13. “A Startup is a human institution
designed to deliver a product or service
under conditions of
extreme uncertainty”
– Eric Ries

15. “Waste is any human activity
which absorbs resources, but
creates no value.”
- James P Womak and Daniel T. Jones, Lean Thinking

16. Over the past 35 years, design &
development, much like Waterfall*,
accumulated a lot of wasteful, time-
consuming, CYA practices that
delivered no discernable value to the
business or to customers.

18. Zach Nies

21. LEAN STARTUP LIFECYCLE

23. LEAN STARTUP BUSINESS MODEL CANVAS

24. GOOB (GET OUT OF THE BUILDING)
Hypotheses, Not Requirements
Focus on Learning (innovation accounting)
Use Iterative Design & Testing
Validating before Scale
Small Batches = Less Risk
CORE LEAN STARTUP CONCEPTS

25. Your team should maximize for:
LEARNING
FOCUS
While Minimizing:
CYCLE TIME

26. 1. Most teams don't start with a customer hypothesis; they work
backwards from a solution hypothesis.
2. Because teams start with a solution hypothesis, it's almost
impossible for them to generate multiple hypotheses for testing.
3. GOOB, when done poorly, is particularly prone to confirmation
bias
4. Formulating hypotheses & stating assumptions is hard.
5. Designing reliable experiments is a skill that takes time to learn
6. There is little focus on the organization / value stream
7. It is “ahistorical” meaning little knowledge of it’s own past
DECONSTRUCTING LEAN STARTUP

27. Lean*UX
#WTF?

28. By Lean*UX
most people really mean
“UX in the context of
the Lean Startup Method”
Term coined by Janice Fraser, Founder of LUXR

29. WHAT is LEANUX?

30. LEAN UX CYCLE

31. FUNDAMENTALS OF LEAN UX
• Balanced, Cross-functional team
• Externalize (visualize) process
• Flow: Think > Make > Check
• Research to understand Customer/Problem Space
• No proxies between customers and team
• Collaborative Sense-making
• Generative Ideation: It’s about optionality
• Formulate many small experiments and measure
outcome

32. Your team should maximize for:
LEARNING
FOCUS
While Minimizing:
CYCLE TIME

34. • Customer Exploration
• Problem Exploration
• Solution Exploration
• Iteration & Scaling
LEANUX PROCESS
Let’s unpack what this looks like…

35. BASICS OF CUSTOMER EXPLORATION

37. UX MANTRA
Mantra: You are not the customer.
Only through research can we
uncover people’s pains, needs, and
goals, in their context.

39. Background

40. WHY RESEARCH?
Insights about an industry, market, or customer segment
were never discovered sitting on your fucking couch.

41. MALKOVICH BIAS
The tendency to believe that everyone uses technology
the same way you do.
- Andres Glusman

42. Customer ResearchHOW MUCH RESEARCH?
Lot
s
People
Insights

43. 12
Lot
s
People
Insights
A RESEARCH HEURISTIC

44. THE RESEARCH INSIGHT DESPAIR CURVE

46. • Most teams practicing Lean Startup don't start with a customer
hypothesis; they work backwards from a solution hypothesis
• Because teams start with a solution hypothesis, it's almost
impossible for them to generate multiple hypotheses for testing
• GOOB, when done poorly, is particularly prone to confirmation
bias
• Most teams have trouble formulating hypotheses & identifying
assumptions
• Designing reliable experiments is a skill that takes time to learn
• People new to customer research are really bad at listening for
weak signals
• When a customer interview is guided, it almost never provides
opportunity for serendipitous insights to emerge
Problems with Lean Startup

47. • Customer Exploration
• Problem Exploration
• Solution Exploration
• Iteration & Scaling
LEANUX PROCESS

48. How do we make sense of the world so that we can
make decisions and act?

49. A BERRYPICKING MODEL OF LEAN STARTUP

50. PROBLEM FRAMING

51. 4 W PROBLEM EXPLORATION

52. § Who
§ What
§ Why
§ Where
4W Exploration

53. Who
Who has this problem? Is it your
customer? Have you validated that the
problem is real? Can you prove it?

54. What
What is the nature of the problem? Can
you explain it simply? How do you know
it’s a problem? What is the evidence to
support the problem?

55. Why do you believe it is a problem worth
solving? Is it an acute problem for the
customer? How acute?
Why

56. Where does this problem arise? In which
context does the customer experience the
problem? Have you observed the problem
in context? Can you describe that
context?
Where

57. By yourself - write out on
post-its at least 2
• Who
• What
• Why
• Where
4W Exploration – 10 min

58. As a team, present all post-its onto a blank
sheet of large paper, discuss all 4 Ws people
presented, take note of duplicates.
• Which 2 are most revealing
• Which 2 are most relevant to your
customer on your empathy map?
Use dot-voting
4W Exploration –
Synthesis– 20 minutes

59. Now, after reviewing the 4W Canvas, please
write out at least a paragraph describing the
problem as a problem statement. Make sure
to be explicit about the Who, What, Why,
Where.
Problem Statement – 10 minutes

61. Each team member present their problem
statement. Dot vote on the 1 strongest
problem (or combine them).
Team must present a single problem
statement to the entire group
Synthesis – 10 minutes

62. Every team select one person.
Stand Up and read problem statement.
Place on flip chart at front of the room.
PRESENT

63. CYNEFIN

64. The place of your
multiple belongings

65. CYNEFIN

66. • Customer Exploration
• Problem Exploration
• Solution Exploration
• Iteration & Scaling
LEANUX PROCESS

67. SOLUTION IDEATION

68. EXPLOITATION vs EXPLORATION

70. CREATE
PITCH
CRITIQUE

71. Generate lots of design concepts (options*)
Present concept as stories
Critique using Ritual Dissent
Integrate (steal) & Iterate
Check stories for coherence
Converge around testable solution hypotheses
Design Studio
*See Chris Matts Real Options Theory

72. • Customer Exploration
• Problem Exploration
• Solution Exploration
• Iteration & Scaling
LEANUX PROCESS

73. ITERATE & SCALE

76. WHY PROTOTYPE?
• Explore
• Quickly create testable solution options
• Identifies problems before they’re coded
• Reflection-in-action*
• Experiment
• Early frequent feedback from customers
• Low opportunity cost
• Evolve understanding of customer behaviors
* Theory in Pracice, Chris Argyris & Donald Schön

77. WHAT FIDELITY?
• Low fidelity
• Paper
• Medium fidelity
• Axure
• Omnigraffle
• Indigo Studio
• Clickable Wireframes
• High Fidelity
• Twitter Bootstrap
• jQueryUI
• Zurb Foundation
Beware of “endowment effect,”
also called the divestiture
aversion.
Once people invest time/effort
“sketching with code,” its very
difficult to throw the concept
away and explore new options.”
Identify what you want to learn,
pick the least effort to go through
Build > Measure > Learn

78. LEANUX PRINCIPLES
• Discover customer problems through research
• Cross-functional collaboration
• Visualize the work
• Invalidate assumptions
• Generate many problem options
• Collaborative solutioning
• Validation before scaling

79. THE LEANUX KATA
• Who is the customer?
• What is their problem?
• What do you know and how do you know it?
• What are your assumptions? How will you test them?
• What have you learned and what should you learn next?
• What is your very next experiment? How will you measure
it?

80. LEAN THINKING

81. LEAN PRINCIPLES
• Identify Customers & Value
• Map the Value Stream
• Create Flow by Eliminating Waste
• Respond to Customer Pull
• Continuously Improve

82. PURPOSE, PROCESS, PEOPLE
• Purpose: What is our organizations purpose? Who is our
customer? What is the value? Where is the target?
• Process: How will the organization assess each major value stream
to make sure we’re maximizing optionality while decreasing waste?
• People: How do we empower people to own the process, own the
work, and be constantly learning? How can everyone touching the
value stream be actively engaged in operating it correctly and
continually improving it?

83. LEANUX MANAGEMENT
“Lean UX management is not about experts
providing answers, or aligning “resources” to a
strategic vision. It’s about providing a system of
constraints for people to ask the right questions, find
purpose in their work, and be empowered to make
decisions and constantly learn & improve through
experimentation and failure.”

84. WILL EVANS
Design Thinker-in-Residence
NYU Stern School of Management
Will.Evans@PraxisFlow.com
@semanticwill