5No matter where your colleagues are located, you can all still practice the fundamentals of lean UX. Image by Claire Murray6.
My colleague Ajay and I have been working at incorporating lean UX at the enterprise level for over two years. In studying it, I find that there’s a temptation to lay down rules, and if the rules aren’t followed… well, then, you can’t call it lean UX. At the end of the day, though, some lean UX is better than none.
If you were told to finish off the following sentence, how would you do it?
“You’re not practicing lean UX if…”
I asked that very same question on Twitter, LinkedIn and email to some lean UX thinkers1 out there. My personal conclusion is simple. Lean UX is a set of principles that may be used to guide you to better, more desirable solutions for users. It’s not a process in which each tool is rigidly applied.
Let me give you a real-world example. Co-location is a hot topic in the lean UX discussion. If you talk to experts and read their tweets and blogs, you might get the sense that if you’re not a co-located, two-pizza-eating team2, then you can’t practice lean UX. I know that this is not the intent of authors of resources on lean UX3, but it’s out there. Frankly, the situation is ideal, but if you work in a large company, it might not be the reality.
The value of co-location is obvious. As Jeff Gothelf describes in his book Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience4:
“Nothing is more effective than walking over to a colleague, showing some work, discussing, sketching, exchanging ideas, understanding facial expressions and body language, and reaching a resolution on a thorny topic.”
I couldn’t agree more, but in one of my projects, it’s not a reality. Our team is spread across three states, two countries and three companies. We believe, however, that we can still practice the fundamentals of lean UX successfully despite this, and I believe we do. Our methods might make a purist cringe, but we have a measure of success (and also measurable success).
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No matter where your colleagues are located, you can all still practice the fundamentals of lean UX. Image by Claire Murray6.
So, what I really wanted to know when I asked the question above was, what are the absolute must-haves in order to be successful with lean UX?
Here are a few of my favorite responses to “You’re not practicing lean UX if…,” along with my reasons why (in brackets):
From Jeff Gothelf8:
From Melissa Hui9:
After receiving these responses, I felt compelled to create a manifesto. The responses helped me to focus on the guiding principles behind lean UX. I like the ones cited above because they focus not on a particular tool, but rather on the seeds of innovation behavior. After reading all of the tweets and emails and then thinking about the current toolset, I boiled down the manifesto to what follows below.
I didn’t do it alone. I enlisted the help of two colleagues who I also consider mentors: Ha Phan, quoted above, and Ajay Revels, my lean UX partner in crime. Visit the Lean UX Manifesto website10 for more of the back story.
So, here is what we believe:
We are developing a way to create digital experiences that are valued by our end users. Through this work, we hold in high regard the following:
- Early customer validation over releasing products with unknown end-user value
- Collaborative design over designing on an island
- Solving user problems over designing the next “cool” feature
- Measuring KPIs over undefined success metrics
- Applying appropriate tools over following a rigid plan
- Nimble design over heavy wireframes, comps or specs
As stated in the Agile Manifesto, “While there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.”
Let’s take each of these in turn and see how we can follow the principles of lean UX.
What if you worked at a company where usability testing just wasn’t done? Unfortunately, this is the sad state in which many of our fellow UX practitioners find themselves. How, then, do they follow the principles of lean UX?
With usability testing, we seek customer validation or early failure. Customer validation may be sought through other means as well. For example, does your company gather feedback from users? If that feedback is circulated, are you on the list of people who receive it?
Here are other sources of learning about customer needs:
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Salespeople and customer service representatives are great sources of learning about customer needs. (Image: Renato Ganoza12)
Design should not be a solo exercise. Being a design team of one is no excuse. I use the design studio process13 and adopt the role of facilitator. Gather team members who own a piece of the project, and host a design studio workshop. Include at least the following people (adjusting to suit your unique organization):
When you’re handed a requirements document, a thought-out solution, a feature, a brief or whatever artifact you receive to inform your work, begin by asking, “What problem are we trying to solve?” Ideally, you should clearly understand the customer’s problem. Design is problem-solving, so if you don’t know the problem, you can’t design a solution. If you do this enough, then the stakeholders will understand that you’re more than just a wireframe jockey. You’re a professional problem-solver with a system for creating solutions that make sense.
You can’t measure success if you aren’t… er, measuring. Avoid vanity metrics. I love Dave McClure’s pirate metrics14:
Lean UX should be a flexible process. As I started to develop the process steps for one cycle, I found myself overwhelmed with the number of tools being recommended. My advice, similar to what I’d say when creating a minimum viable product, is to apply the minimum tools required to get you to “pivot” or “persevere.”
Here are a few tools that I’ve found useful (not an exhaustive list):
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The design studio method is popular for collaborative design. (Image: visualpun.ch16)
Everything else should be applied as it makes sense. For example, if more customer development is needed, then take the time to interview as a team and to internalize customer needs. The lean startup world has no shortage of tools. Use only the ones that make sense to your project and that get you to a validated solution faster.
The goal is to release a product. Once it’s released, users won’t interact with the wireframes or requirements document as part of the product. They will interact with the product itself. So, try to spend less time on your design artifacts.
How can you lighten your wireframes?
This all boils down to something that I call principle-driven design. As stated, some lean UX is better than none, so applying these principles as best you can will get you to customer-validated, early-failure solutions more quickly. Rules are for practitioners who don’t really know the value of this process, while principles demand wisdom and maturity.
By allowing principles to drive you, you’ll find that you’re more nimble, reasonable and collaborative. Really, you’ll be overall better at getting to solutions. This will please your stakeholders and team members from other disciplines (development, visual design, business, etc.). To quote the late Stephen Covey:
“There are three constants in life: change, choice and principles.”
That pretty much sums up lean UX.
(al, il, ea)