Lean Design by Bullet Point
"Lean UX is focused on the experience under design and is less focused on deliverables than traditional UX. It requires a greater level of collaboration with the entire team. The core objective is to focus on obtaining feedback as early as possible so that it can be used to make quick decisions. The nature of Agile development is to work in rapid, iterative cycles and Lean UX mimics these cycles to ensure that data generated can be used in each iteration." - Interaction Design Foundation
• Be Collaborative. Everyone must be aware of design decisions. They will catch a bad one
• Test early, test often. Catch problems, don't develop them
• Speed first, aesthetics second. Don't take something useless and make it pretty
• User facing staff must be heavy involved. They know the user more than anyone else
• Don't work towards handoffs. If they fail all effort has been wasted
• Make Assumptions. Get things moving
• Hypostasise. Get things moving
• Host a Design studio. They get a lot done well in a short space of time
• Know your users profile. 101
• If possible use code prototyping. It can be reused. But only if can be done fast
• Speak with customer often. Guess work can be hard
• Act on feed back. Its always useful
• Lean design is a collaborative process. Don't limit the project to your skills
• Conversation is your best tool. There is less knowledge converted to text form
• Spent less or no time on disposable documentation and more time talking
• Create a 'Problem Statement'. Now you can solve it.
• Set benchmarks and test hypostasise. If you are failing stop and fix the problem
• Don’t focus on output: drawings etc. Focus on outcome: happy customers etc.
• Pick features that are needed. Forget the easy hits
• Create a style guide/pattern library. When thats done more effort can be directed to important issues
• Get a MVP out there to test your hypothesis. You'll never know for sure if you don't
• Do bite size research. Don't research the wrong topic for a long period of time
• Speak with customer often. At least every few days for feed back. They will keep you on track
• Usability testing should be viewed by the team.
• Talk to everyone in the office to gain feed back. Different eyes see different issues
• Don’t run big studies… just small ones often. Some studies are bigger than the problem they are trying to solve!
• Customer Service is valuable. Customers produce the highest quality insights
• Use A/B testing. May the best design win!
• Do user testing every week. Catch small issues before they become big ones.
• Focus on the customer. It can be easy to forget for many reasons.
• Little up front design. Just develop enough to know they can be tested
• If you have to change direction make sure you have little waste. Keep an eye on effort placed in untested designs
• Value problem solving. Solving problems is at the core of all design
- Mick Quinn
