the emperor's new lean ux: why i'm not using lean ux, and perhaps why you shouldn't...
TRANSCRIPT
12/14/2015
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Copyright 2015 UX Design Edge. All rights reserved.
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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A visualization
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© Projectcartoon.com, http://projectcartoon.com/cartoon/516243
No UX heroes or rockstars
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Instead, all roles must collaborate, and beautiful mockups are downplayed
Shouldn’t have one authority bottleneck
But…
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UX design is much easier if someone on the team actually knows what they are doing
Way to easy to misinterpret as: no ux design talent or having those dreaded unicorns
Instead should be: no design bottlenecks
Lean and agile go together well
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Radical claim: Lean and agile are a lousy combination
Why? Effective lean: avoid writing code until hypotheses proven
Agile manifesto: Working code is the ultimate measure of progress
Gothelf’s MVP revision (purely an assumption)
Lean + agile = working code MVP -> not really agile or lean
Let’s just get something out there! Translation: Let’s just get the code to work—and worry about the
UX later
My two insights to successful lean UX
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Everybody: Build -> Measure -> Learn
Joshua Kerievsky: Learn -> Measure -> Build This is the right order!!
Insight 1: Critical learning -> meaningful metrics -> MNPCE* *Minimal non-production-code experiment
Insight 2: Critical learning is almost always a question of delivering value
This makes total sense to me!
x
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x
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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
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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
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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 [email protected]
Let’s connect on LinkedIn
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Thank you!
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