Lean UX is all the rage for 2015, as many teams are starting to adapt it. The goal is to make evidence-based design decisions to learn from our customers, and minimize waste in doing so. But one thing we need more evidence on: if using lean UX actually works! In practice, lean UX is often a rationalization for poorly designed MVPs that fail to deliver the promised benefits.
For the first half of this talk, Everett will present the fundamental concepts and techniques of lean UX, and make a case why they may not deliver their promised results. The second half will be a group discussion about your own experience with lean techniques, and whether or not you agree with Everett's concerns.
The Emperor's New Lean UX: Why I'm not using lean UX, and perhaps why you shouldn't either
1. 12/14/2015
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The Emperor’s New Lean UX
Why I’m not using lean UX and
perhaps you shouldn’t either
Everett McKay
UX Design Edge
uxdesignedge.com
@uxdesignedge
UX Speakeasy VT, December 2015
Who is this guy?
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Principal of UX Design Edge (from Vermont, USA)
Offer UI design classes, workshops, and consulting
services, primarily to software teams that don’t have
(sufficient) design talent and resources
Previously was a Windows PM at Microsoft, where I
owned Windows Server security UI and wrote the
Windows UX Guidelines (but not for Windows 8)
Before that, was a developer of Windows and Mac UIs
As a UX consultant, I have experienced lean UX
vicariously
Have taken Jeff Gothelf’s Lean UX Workshop
Today’s agenda
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Major lean principles
Secondary lean principles
My lean alternative
Group discussion
Ground rules
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I want to get through the material quickly, so let’s save
most discussions for the Group discussion section
Sup?
Introduction
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A quick survey
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5 minutes Are you using lean UX now (or plan to)?
If yes, how is it working?
If not, why not?
Can anyone claim that lean UX leads to
better product design (based on shipping
better products!)
Why this subject?
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Lean UX is a hot topic now
Several of my customers are adapting or considering
I believe the foundation of lean is weak, but nobody is
challenging it
I see many promises, but not results
The goal of lean UX is great
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The goal: Build the right product, avoid wasting time
Who doesn’t want that?
But often methodologies boil down to practices and
steps—the goals behind them tend to get lost!
Everett’s Law of Processes
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Any process can and will be misused…once
practitioners lose sight of the goals behind the process
Over time, rituals and dogma take over
That’s not really agile!
But that’s what you are supposed to do!
Lean UX in a nutshell
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In theory
More efficient, collaborative, user/evidence-driven design
Build -> Measure -> Learn, using an MVP as a test vehicle
Objective: Avoid shipping big product that nobody wants
In practice
Used to justify weak design process
Code -> pretend to measure -> code some more
What successful lean UX looks like
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Start a project
Determine significant hypotheses
Validate them immediately (without production code)
Significantly change direction as a result
That is as good as it gets
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Groupthink
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People are embarrassed to admit if they aren’t using
People are embarrassed if it doesn’t work
If it doesn’t work, you aren’t doing it right!
Nobody is questioning agile or lean
UX South Africa informal survey, Dr. Eric Schaffer
Program from an upcoming UX conference
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Keynote: Great UX in an agile world
Session 1: Making agile UX work
Session 2: Making agile UX work in the real world
Session 3: Agile and lean UX
Session 4: Making agile and lean UX work in the real
world
Session 5: WTF—why isn’t this working?
Session 6: Trust us, it’s still better than waterfall
Why we must question lean
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If lean (and agile) work so well, where are the results?
Imagine a lean UX restaurant
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No “heroes” (expert chef or skilled cooks), no clear roles
Decisions are made in collaborative, closely working teams
All meals are a hypothesis with evidence-based learning
No cookbooks or recipes
Cook -> eat -> learn
No written “deliverables”, whiteboard notes and
conversations instead
Q: What would you expect the results to be?
The foundation of lean UX
Major lean principles
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Get out of the deliverables business
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Top goal is to reduce waste
Traditional deliverables such as UI specs are
considered waste
Who wants to write (or read) a 200 page UI spec?
Lean UX teams don’t write any specs, terrified of
sinning
It’s all on whiteboards, so it’s OK!
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But…
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Q: What would you do if you needed to have your
team deliver a well-designed product or feature as
quickly as possible?
I would write a spec!!! Learn a tremendous amount quickly!
Lean assumes specs are mostly about paper and typing
Good specs are about making design decisions and
communicating them efficiently
Only poorly written, unnecessary deliverables are
wasteful—the others exist for a reason!
The prototype as the design doc
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Using a prototype to document the design is a lean
recommendation
This is the worst way to prototype
Discrepancies…
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In lean, “learning” (and therefore failure) is supposed
to be good
But apparently only if do through group activities,
code, MVP…
Traditional design tools are considered pure waste
All designs are a hypothesis
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For evidence-based design, you need to validate your
designs through some kind of test
Build -> Measure -> Learn
Designs are not based on expertise of designers, but
the output of a evidence-based collaborative process
But…
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This simply isn’t true…assumes we know nothing about good
design or our customers
Need a much higher bar on things to test—we don’t have to
learn everything
UX design is hard, evidence-based user research is much, much,
much harder
Creating meaningful tests and metrics, creating something to
test, performing the test, analyzing the results, drawing the
correct conclusions, making the right changes—is extremely
difficult for people without a UX background
More likely to be mislead as to be informed
Discrepancies…
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Lean UX is just rediscovering the need for user
research and user testing
Except lean teams lack the expertise to do well
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A/B Testing
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A favorite evaluation technique for lean UX
Normally, A/B tests are scientifically valid tests
performed on a very large sample to measure
conversion
For lean, A/B tests are performed on a small sample to
measure usability and preference
But…
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Evidence-based != flawed test with arbitrary metrics
If you don’t know how to do scientifically valid
experiments or set meaningful metrics and you do the
test anyway, what do the results mean?
…but it’s science!!
Discrepancies
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Validating everything wastes a lot of time, but our goal
was to avoid waste
Skeptical that lean UX teams actually learn anything
Key: Do lean teams throw away working code?
Do lean teams really abandon designs if the test results
don’t support them?
In practice: lean teams either don’t do the hypothesis
testing, or make the minimal chances to code to
address problems (never starting over)
Minimal viable products
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A minimal viable product (MVP) has sufficient features
to satisfy early adaptors (Eric Ries)
But…
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For most teams, lean boils down to creating the MVP
They don’t actually test anything to validate hypotheses
And for most teams, that MVP consists of working
code (not wireframes, demos, etc.)
But what exactly is an MVP, and how do you prevent
it from being crap (Minimal Vcrappy Product)?
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From Gothelf’s Lean UX
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MVPs are used to validate assumptions to minimize
waste
The smallest thing to validate each hypothesis to
decide to proceed
-or- the simplest product that delivers value to the
market
Could be a sketch, wireframe, prototype, demo,
preview—or—a working product
Design only what you need, deliver it quickly, and get
meaningful feedback fast
From Klein’s UX for Lean Startups
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An MVP is minimal, viable, and a product…that isn’t
crappy
What is crappy?
A crappy product often tries to do too many things at once,
and it doesn’t do any of those things particularly well
Excuse me, but WTF?
Recommends a fake landing page as an MVP!
Nobody knows what an MVP is!!
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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I challenge you to apply either book to determine if
something is an MVP (vs. a non-MVP prototype, etc.)
And determine if it is an effective MVP
Is Zombo.com a good MVP?
Nobody knows how to evaluate an MVP
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Great design doesn’t sell itself
Examples from popular culture: books, actors,
musicians
Best tech example: What was the MVP for the iPad?
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“It's not the
customer’s job to
know what they
want.”
Steve Jobs
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Still more promises…
Secondary concepts
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Shared understanding
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Gothelf: Shared understanding is the currency of lean
UX
My Lean UX workshop experience
My conclusion: this is only an aspiration
Collaborative, cross-functional teams
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Constantly hear (in theory): Need to break down the
silos!
Constantly hear (in practice): More stakeholders makes
things worse rather than better
Small core teams work best, involving everybody is
overrated, leads to design by committee
Working with many stakeholders
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“…a horse designed
by committee”
Sir Alec Issigonis
Brainstorming vs. crazy eights, 10+10
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…also called Design Studio
To brainstorm, Gothelf recommends individuals come
up with 8 sketches in 10 minutes (so, 1.25 minutes per)
I love brainstorming, but
Visual brainstorming limits thinking
Arbitrarily small time limit focuses on trivial/obvious ideas
9. 12/14/2015
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Get out of the building (GOOB)
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Steve Blank: There are no facts inside the building
Me: Bullshit!
Problem: Talking to users is extremely difficult to do
well
If you don’t know how to do it, likely to be mislead
Topics conspicuously missing from Lean UX
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Traditional user research
Leveraging existing knowledge through design
principles, guidelines, and patterns
What to do instead…
My lean alternative
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My problem with lean UX
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The root cause of our biggest UX design problems:
using code-driven, feature-based, requirements-based
design
Both agile and lean attempt to solve this problem—
with code-driven, feature-based, requirements-based
design!
See the problem?
Things to not do
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Avoid fads or trends
Don’t adapt your project to a process—should be the
other way around
If something doesn’t work, fix it or stop it
Don’t assume that it’s your teams fault
Don’t be dogmatic (write some specs!)
Question everything before committing your project to it
Don’t overdesign
Ship small releases to stay on target
Things to do
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Be very clear on the process/design problems you are
trying to solve
Don’t lose sight of the goal: the best product developed
with the least waste
Use Learn -> Measure -> Experiment, only to determine if
you are delivering value
Production code is the least lean way of making most
design decisions
Train your team!! (knowledge and skill beats process)
Communicate well: devs oppose what they don’t
understand
10. 12/14/2015
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Key questions to ask
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Are you really shipping awesome user experiences that
meet users’ goals?
Are you really minimizing waste?
Does your team make important design decisions
quickly and confidently?
Are you really validating hypotheses, and significantly
changing direction as a result?
If your answer to any of these questions is “no”, you’re
only pretending to be lean
So, what do you think?
Group discussion
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Ground rules
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Any mention of waterfall is not allowed!
Group discussion
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So, what do you think?
Wrap up
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Got feedback?
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Would love to hear it!
Please send it to everettm@uxdesignedge.com
Let’s connect on LinkedIn
11. 12/14/2015
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Thank you!
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