Oct 31, 2015
DESIGN IN STARTUPS
STARTUP CAREER DAY
By Mike Chen

Hi, I’m Mike.

Minitheory specialises in product design
We design based on how people think and behave
Research
Competitor Research
Analytics
Stakeholder Interviews
Guerilla Testing
Analysis of Data, Models
and Systems
Ideation & Exploration
Whiteboarding
Lo-fi Sketching
Paper Prototypes
User Flow and Scenarios
Design
Visual Design
UI Style Guide
Design Specifications
Prototype
Clickable wireframes
Interactions + Animations
Usability Testing

Guiding principles
1. Technology should make life simpler
2. Design based on how people think, work and
behave
3. Design to solve problems, not to paint pretty
pictures
4. Experiment, fail fast and iterate
We want to make software simple and useful
We love computers, but it’s unfortunate that some software makes us feel like idiots. We want to
change that. We expect software to be intuitively designed - and ultimately, useful.

Design in Startups

What is Design?

Is it about making
beautiful things?
Mercury Watch by ZIIIRO. Image Credit: Fancy.com

“the products of design are just the means to an end...
this implies that design is a field of outcomes and
consequences more than one of artifacts.”
Excerpt From: Frank Chimero. “The Shape of Design.”
The Shape of Design by Frank Chimero. Image Credit: #incipitreadings

Creating outcomes
Not creating artifacts
What we create is a means to an end
What is design?

Creating outcomes
behavioural
emotional
physiological
& more...
sounds fluffy?

Behavioral
outcome
Image Credit: Candy Crush Soda by King

Emotional outcome
Image Credit: Inside Out by Pixar. Article by Huffington Post.

Emotional outcome
Image Credit: Inside Out by Pixar. Article by Huffington Post.

Physiological outcome
Image Credit: Lounge Chair with Ottoman by Charles Eames

What outcomes can design
create for startups?

Imagine for a minute
you run an ecommerce startup

Behavioral outcome
Find a specific
product easily
Browse if not sure
what to buy
Checkout and buy

Behavioral outcome
Checkout and buy
Ka-ching!

Emotional outcome
Familiar logos/designs
Create trust

Emotional outcome
Removing friction
Encourages impulse buys

Sign up
Invite friends
Enter credit card
Log in everyday Facebook!
And the list goes on...

How do we create these
outcomes?

Jump into Photoshop?
Image credit: Adobe

Run experiments!
Image credit: RCA Records

Run experiments!
Image credit: RCA Records

Expected Outcome
Hypothesis
Run the Experiment
Feedback &
Research
Analysis
Create the Prototype
MVP
Lean UX. Jeff Gothelf

Becoming a Lean UX Guru. Startitup.
Is the problem painful enough?
Does my solution solve it?
Different outcomes needed at
different stages of a startup

Learn about your users goals and pain points
through user research
Resources for user research “Just Enough Research” by Erika Hall, “Interviewing Users” by Steve Portigal

A persona summarises similar
behavioural patterns
Pain point:
Wine is inaccessible for
beginners
Solution?

A personal transportation that “will be to the car what the car
was to the horse and buggy”
Reality
● slower than a bicycle
● but much more expensive
● can’t be ridden on the road
● can’t be put in a car/bus/train
● people got laughed at for
riding on it
It didn’t fit into people’s lives, and didn’t solve problems
people had.
The Segway

Lean UX Week. Luxr
Rapid prototypes test market assumptions, and
use customer feedback to evolve the design
faster and reduce waste.

Make your ideas real… Really fast!
And the fastest tools:

Example Usability Test with a Paper Prototype. Blue Duck Labs

Prototyping for Elmo’s Monster Maker iPhone App. IDEO. Projectors and pico projectors can be used to manipulate
the environment.
Google glass was prototyped in a day using a pico-
projector, chopsticks and a coat hanger.
No programming skills or software? Simply edit your
drawings as an animated movie.
Helpful Rapid Prototyping Methods and tools to bring Digital Ideas to Life Fast. Chief Disruption Officer

Work ugly, quick and dirty.
Get out and test it

Ugly?
WTF?

Lean UX Week. Luxr
THINK
release
MAKE
release
MAKE
release
MAKE
time
Risk(unvalidated
effort)

Lean UX Week. Luxr
Risk(unvalidated
effort)
time

How to build a minimum viable product. Fast Monkeys

RESEARCH PROTOTYPING VISUAL
VISUALPROTOTYPING
“UX/UI”
REALITY

Any questions?
Mike Chen
Co-founder & CEO
@slidbook
mike@minitheory.com
Thanks for your kind attention.

Mike Chen
Co-founder & CEO
@slidbook
mike@minitheory.com

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