Today’s Agenda
● What is Lean UX?
○ Introduction & Principles
● Get going.
○ Hypothesis (assumption/problem
statement)
○ Market / Personas
● Design it.
○ Collaborative design
● Build an MVP
○ Validate
○ Concept vs. Usability testing
● Research
○ Scripts and moderator tips

Lean UX
An introduction.

From idea to validation.

Intro
● Origins of Lean
● Lean Startup
● Lean Ux

Origins of Lean

Toyota
Production
system
Jidoka Intelligent
Automation
1890s
Just in time
manufacturing
1960s
Kiichiro Toyoda{

“Automation with a
human touch”
● Power looms by Sakichi Toyoda
● Complex Processes
● Manual > High Speed Looms
● One operator could oversee over 30 looms
Jidoka Intelligent Automation

● Eliminate waste and Inconsistencies
to improve productivity.
Just In Time Manufacturing
“Making what’s needed,
when it’s needed, in the
amount needed”

Lean manufacturing is a systematic method
for waste minimization within a production
service system that does not sacrifices
productivity.

Lean Startup

A startup is a human institution designed to
create a new product or service under
conditions of extreme uncertainty.

● Author of The Lean Startup
● CTO at IMVU
Eric Ries
Entrepreneur and Author

● Allowed user to create custom 3d avatars
● Messaging networks
● When released, nobody download it
IMVU
Avatar based social experience

Waterfall Build - Measure - Learn
Vs.

Build Measure Learn
Enter the build phase as
quickly as possible (MVP)
Determine whether product
development efforts are leading to
real progress
Persevere or Pivot

Minimum Viable Product

It is a set of practices that help
entrepreneurs increase their chances
of building a successful startup.

Lean UX

Inspired by Lean Startup and Agile
Development , it’s the practice of bringing the
true nature of a product to light faster, in a
collaborative, cross-functional way.

3 Foundations of Lean UX
● Design Thinking
● Lean Startup
● Agile

● Helps us widen the scope of our work
beyond interfaces and artifacts.
● Apply design tools to broader problems.
● Relies on collaboration, iteration, making
and empathy as core to problem-solving.
Design thinking

● Refocuses software development on
shorter cycles.
● Delivers value regularly, and
continuous learning.
● Gets ideas to customers quicker,
senses how these ideas are received,
and adjusts frequently to new
learnings along the way.
Agile

● Remove waste from our UX design
process.
● Collaboration that brings
non-designers into our design process.
● Rapid experimentation and
measurement to learn quickly.
Lean Startup

● Evolution of product design
● Takes the best of the designer’s
toolkits and combines that with
Agile and Lean Startup thinking
● Deeply collaborative and
cross-functional
Why lean UX matters

Lean UX
An introduction.

Principles
Lean ux principles to keep team on course

Team organization
● Cross functional teams
● Small, dedicated, collocated
● Self sufficient
● Empowered

Guide culture
● From doubt to certainty
● Outcomes, not output
● Removing waste
● Shared understanding
● No Rockstars
● Permission to fail

Guide process
● Small batch size
● Continuous discovery
● GOOB: the new user-centricity
● Externalizing your work
● Making over analysis
● Getting out of deliverables business

Lean Ux
Process

Hypothesis
Market, problem and product

Summary
● Assumptions
● Hypothesis
● Outcomes
● Personas

The main tool of outcome-focused work:
The hypothesis statement.
* It is also the starting point.

Assumptions

A high level declaration that is believed to
be true. The act of taking for granted, or
supposing a thing without proof.

● As a user, I want to upload photos so
that I can share content with others.
● As an administrator, I want to approve
photos before they are posted so that I
can make sure they are appropriate.
Assumptions
Examples

● As a user, I want to upload photos so
that I can share content with others.
● As an administrator, I want to approve
photos before they are posted so that I
can make sure they are appropriate.
Assumptions
Examples
?

● Users want to share photos with others.
● Users want to share photos by
uploading them to the platform.
● Administrators want to review the
content uploaded to the platform.
● Administrators want to review the
content by approving it before it is
published.
Assumptions
(On user stories)

Some of these assumptions are wrong, and
if the ones you got wrong are important
enough, you are going to be out of business.

What can we do about
our assumptions?

Hypothesis

A proposition that is presented or put
forward by a scientist to explain a
phenomenon. It does not become a theory
until it is proved and tested under different
conditions and circumstances.

More granular descriptions of our assumptions
that targets specific areas of our product or
workflow for experimentation.

The scientific method asks a
question, forms a hypothesis,
tests and generates data,
analyzes and draws conclusion
that either validate or refute
the hypothesis
Hypothesis

As an administrator,
I want to approve photos before they are posted,
so that I can make sure they are appropriate.

We believe that administrators want to approve the
content before being published, this will result in
appropriate-only content visible in the platform.
We will know this is true once we observe 5 administrators
testing a quick prototype and at least 3 of them mention
this feature adds value to their workflow.

● We don’t assume that we know what
the user wants.
● We start with customer interviews to
validate initial hypotheses.
● We test that hypothesis in various ways
to see if we were right.
Hypothesis
Why is important.

Assumption to Hypothesis.
Why validate?

Validation avoids spending time building a
product with no value to our target market

Market, problem, and solution

The earlier you start to validate your idea, the
less likely is that you will have to pivot later.

A market is the group of people
you think might want to buy your product.
Market

Game time!
Guess the product.

Young professionals who want to
write and tell their stories online.

Young professionals who want to
write and tell their stories online.

People who have a spare room
in their homes.

People who have a spare room
in their homes.

If your product doesn’t solve a problem for
people, then there is little chance they are
going to give you money for it.
Problem
A problem is the reason why
people are going to use your product.

People don’t know where to
publish stories online.

People are concerned about safety
when renting properties.

It is the thing that people, presumably in the
target market, are going to pay your money
for.
Solution
A product is simply the way that you’re
going to solve the user’s problem.

Online platform to share stories you
wrote with people with same interests.

Online platform to rent a spare
rooms when I go on vacations.

Recap
● Market needs to be specific
enough.
● Problem is needed for product
to be valuable for market..
● Solutions can be many of them,
the way you solve problem is
your product

What if there’s no time for market research?
What do we do on the spirit of lean ?

Questions?

Design

Lean UX brings designers and
non-designers together in co-creation.
But it’s not design-by-committee.

It’s a process orchestrated and facilitated
by designers, but executed by specialists in
their individual discipline who share a
common vision.
Lean UX increases team’s ownership over
their work by providing points of view
shared earlier in the process.
Collaborative Design

To test your hypothesis(assumptions) sometimes
you just conduct research(interviews)

Other times, you need to design and build
something to help test your hypothesis.

Team of 5-8 people
● Problem definition & constraints
● Individual Idea Generation
● Presentation and critique
● Iterate and refine (pairs)
● Team idea generation
Design Studio Session

Braindump

Brainwriting

MVP

● A product with just enough features to
satisfy early customers, and to provide
feedback for future development
● Build the smallest possible thing you
can in order to conclusively validate or
invalidate a hypothesis
What is it?
Minimum Viable Product

Minimum Viable
Cake
Not minimum
Not viable

Dropbox’s MVP
To attract customers

Dropbox’s MVP
To win investors

Improve
Existing features
Kill
Underperforming features
Add
New features

Recap
● Biggest risk: building something that
nobody wants.
● Not launching is painful, but not
learning is fatal.
● Put something in users hands and get
real feedback ASAP.

Prototyping
Communicate your ideas clearly and test.

A prototype is an approximation of an
experience that allows to simulate what is it
like to use the product or service in question.

● Fake a solution instead of building.
● Create a prototype that appears real.
● 90% in 3 months vs 90% in one day.
● Storyboards cover almost everything.
Prototype
Is about illusion

● “Perfect” to “Just Enough”
● “Long-term quality” to “Temporary simulation”
Prototype mindset
Changing philosophy from:

1. You can prototype anything
2. Prototypes are disposable
3. Build just enough to learn, but not more.
Prototype mindset
Three principles

Prototyping techniques

1. Created within an hour.
2. Easily rearranged
3. Cheap and easy to throw away
4. Fun to many people
Paper prototypes
Pros
1. Artificial simulation
2. Feedback limited to structure flow
3. Only useful limited audience
Cons

1. More realistic
2. Tests visuals and brand
3. Workflow and UI interactions can
be assessed.
Mid/Hi Fi Prototypes
Pros
1. Some interaction can’t be tested
2. Depending on tool, it can be time-consuming
3. No real data testing
Cons

1. Potential for production
2. More realistic prototype to create
Coded prototypes
Pros
1. Time-consuming
2. Tempting to perfect the code before release
3. Updates and re-iterations can take more time
Cons

● Increases communication with
customer on an interactive
dimension.
● Ideas clearly transmitted.
● Development cost are reduced.
● Helps conduct testing.
Prototype
Why in Lean?

We got our prototype, now what?

We validate!

Validation

“Before your product, you have an idea.
Sometimes it’s a great idea. More often,
it’s a terrible idea. The important thing is
that you validate your idea”

“Before your product, you have an idea.
Sometimes it’s a great idea. More often,
it’s a terrible idea. The important thing is
that you validate your idea”

The process of confirming that a specific
customer segment finds value in a product.

● Don’t assume you know what the user
wants.
● Do develop a hypothesis about what
the user might want…
● Then, test that hypothesis to know if
you were right.
Validation

● It helps you figure out if people would
buy your product before you build it.
● It helps you find possible problems and
improvements in your product before
you even build it
Validation
Why is important in Lean UX.

We believe that administrators want to approve the
content before being published, this will result in
appropriate-only content visible in the platform.
We will know this is true once we observe 5 administrators
testing a quick prototype and at least 3 of them mention
this feature adds value to their workflow.

UX Research

The systematic investigation of users and
requirements, in order to add context and
insight into the process of designing an
experience.

Employs a variety of techniques,
tools, and methodologies to reach
conclusions.
UX Research
How to?

Validation Methods

● Spend some time getting to
know the people you are
building the product for
● Ask open-ended questions and
observe their behaviors.
Ethnographic Studies
Listening to your users

● Rough approximation of your
product or service.
● Gets at the heart of what it would
provide.
● The goal is to understand if your
product has value for the market.
Concept Testing
Capture the essence

● Start seeing very early patterns
● After speaking with around 5
people, you can come up with
some interesting hypotheses.
● Based on this, run a survey to see
if patterns hold true.
Surveys
Find patterns

● Sell Advertise the product before
you build it.
○ Create a page and include
CTA buttons like: “Pre-order”
or “Buy”.
○ Drive traffic to the page and
evaluate demand.
Landing page test
Pretend it’s ready

● Usability testing
● A/B Testing
● Contextual Inquiries
Other
There are many more...

“There’s nothing worse than finishing a
project, releasing a product, and then
learning that no one wants to use it.”

Questions?

Concept vs
Usability Testing
Which one?

Usability Testing

Refers to evaluating a product ease of use
by testing it with representative users.

● Measures tasks completion
● Performance
● Navigability
● Etc...
Usability Testing
When?

An approximation of a product or service that
captures the key essence (value proposition)
of a new concept, feature, product in order to
determine if it meets the target market needs.

● Product concept
● Ad campaign
● New brand/logo
Concept Testing
When?

● Rough illustrations
● Prototypes
● Rough print ads
● Storyboards
● Video
● Surveys
Concept Testing
How?

Concept Usability
Emotions and human behavior. Task Focused
Vs.
Will users pay for my product/service?
why/why not?
Is my solution solving the problems
this particular user has?
Which of these two or three ideas will
my users prefer?
Should I continue building this
product?
Are my users able to complete this
specific task?
How long does it take to complete
this specific set of tasks?
How satisfied are my users with the
way they accomplished their goals?
How good is the performance of my
product/service?

When you are at the beginning of a
project and validating a product idea,
you are miles away from proper
usability testing.
Product Testing
From concept to usability

The beauty of Lean UX is that you can
test almost anything, concepts on
napkin to whiteboard, a quick
wireframe or a fully functional
prototype
Testing in Lean UX
Constantly testing

● People aren’t good at predicting
what they want
● The “Say vs. Do” problem
● Users can make up an opinion
Prototype
Validating

Concept testing gives your target audience a
rough idea (essence) of your product or
service and helps you understand if they
would want or need such product.

Recap
● Concepting testing shows a rough
approximation of a product idea to a
market.
● Use concept testing when you have an
MVP or initial hypothesis and you need
validation.
● You will generate better insights by
exposing your market to your idea.

Pivot or persevere?

Recap ● Lean UX?
○ Introduction & Principles
● Get going.
○ Hypothesis (assumption/problem
statement)
○ Market / Personas
● Design it.
○ Collaborative design
● Build an MVP
○ Validate
○ Concept vs. Usability testing
● Research
○ Scripts and moderator tips

Lean UX is the evolution of product design and
team collaboration. It takes the best parts of the
designer’s toolkit, combines it with Agile software
development and Lean Startup thinking, and makes
it available to the entire product team.

THANK YOU.