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Lean Startup & LeanUX: Stop Bullshitting & Buil...

Lean UX DUS
June 30, 2014

Lean Startup & LeanUX: Stop Bullshitting & Build Some Fucking Value (by Will Evans)

To understand the emergence of Lean Startup and LeanUX, two new methods that seem to be storming the media and software landscape in the business press, we need to go back and understand how these are really the exaptation of Lean Systems Thinking and principles, transplanted from the world of manufacturing into the world of software design. The very idea first introduced by Buckminster Fuller, when he said that everything was becoming ephemeral, or more recently when Marc Andreeson said, “software is eating the world.”

We'll cover aspects of LeanUX research and Lean Startup, which is conducted to gain a validated understanding of the customer’s problem hypothesis to understand if the problem we think customers have, is something they actually have before spending months and tens of thousands of dollars doing wasteful UX research & design time on a concept that delivers no customer value.

This is a radical departure from the traditional “Push,” systems of software design that has dominated the landscape since the early 80s. We’ll trace the provenance of many “new” ideas surfacing in the Lean Startup movement, and show that for many people familiar with Lean Thinking, there is nothing really new here - except some of the nuances in which enterprises are exploring new ways of imaging value creation in large enterprises where more and more of the “output” is information and knowledge, not cars and jet engines.

Lean UX DUS

June 30, 2014
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  1. WILL EVANS Design Thinker-in-Residence NYU Stern School of Management [email protected]

    @semanticwill BILL BEARD Founder, Creative Director Beard Branding [email protected] @writebeard
  2. "My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone

    who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them - as steps - to climb beyond them. He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.” - Wittgenstein
  3. The problem with many startups is that you spend months

    or years doing research, writing requirements, designing and building software… and discover no customer or user cares.
  4. It Started With a Question If startups fail from a

    lack of customers not product development failure… Then why do we have: •  A process for product development? •  No process for customer development?
  5. “A Startup is a human institution designed to deliver a

    product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty” – Eric Ries
  6. “Waste is any human activity which absorbs resources, but creates

    no value.” - James P Womak and Daniel T. Jones, Lean Thinking
  7. Over the past 35 years, design & development, much like

    Waterfall*, accumulated a lot of wasteful, time- consuming, CYA practices that delivered no discernable value to the business or to customers.
  8. If you can't describe what you are doing as a

    process, you don't know what you're doing. - W. Edwards Deming
  9. GOOB (GET OUT OF THE BUILDING) Hypotheses, Not Requirements Focus

    on Learning (innovation accounting) Use Iterative Design & Testing Validating before Scale Small Batches = Less Risk CORE LEAN STARTUP CONCEPTS
  10. 1.  Most teams don't start with a customer hypothesis; they

    work backwards from a solution hypothesis. 2.  Because teams start with a solution hypothesis, it's almost impossible for them to generate multiple hypotheses for testing. 3.  GOOB, when done poorly, is particularly prone to confirmation bias 4.  Formulating hypotheses & stating assumptions is hard. 5.  Designing reliable experiments is a skill that takes time to learn 6.  There is little focus on the organization / value stream 7.  It is “ahistorical” meaning little knowledge of it’s own past DECONSTRUCTING LEAN STARTUP
  11. By Lean*UX most people really mean “UX in the context

    of the Lean Startup Method” Term coined by Janice Fraser, Founder of LUXR
  12. FUNDAMENTALS OF LEAN UX •  Balanced, Cross-functional team •  Externalize

    (visualize) process •  Flow: Think > Make > Check •  Research to understand Customer/Problem Space •  No proxies between customers and team •  Collaborative Sense-making •  Generative Ideation: It’s about optionality •  Formulate many small experiments and measure outcome
  13. •  Customer Exploration •  Problem Exploration •  Solution Exploration • 

    Iteration & Scaling LEANUX PROCESS Let’s unpack what this looks like…
  14. UX MANTRA Mantra: You are not the customer. Only through

    research can we uncover people’s pains, needs, and goals, in their context.
  15. How do we make sense of the world so that

    we can make decisions and act?
  16. Generate lots of design concepts (options*) Present concept as stories

    Critique using Ritual Dissent Integrate (steal) & Iterate Check stories for coherence Converge around testable solution hypotheses Design Studio *See Chris Matts Real Options Theory
  17. From insights, you can create multiple problem & solution hypotheses

    sets. It's not about designing the one right solution and refining. It's about testing many solutions to multiple problem hypotheses. It's about many small bets. Maximize Optionality
  18. LEANUX PRINCIPLES •  Discover customer problems through research •  Cross-functional

    collaboration •  Visualize the work •  Invalidate assumptions •  Generate many problem options •  Collaborative solutioning •  Validation before scaling
  19. THE LEANUX KATA •  Who is the customer? •  What

    is their problem? •  What do you know and how do you know it? •  What are your assumptions? How will you test them? •  What have you learned and what should you learn next? •  What is your very next experiment? How will you measure it?
  20. LEAN PRINCIPLES •  Identify Customers & Value •  Map the

    Value Stream •  Create Flow by Eliminating Waste •  Respond to Customer Pull •  Continuously Improve
  21. PURPOSE, PROCESS, PEOPLE •  Purpose: What customer problems are we

    trying to achieve to grow the business? What is the value? Where is the target? •  Process: How will the organization assess each major value stream to make sure we’re maximizing optionality while decreasing waste? •  People: How do we empower people to own the process, own the work, and be constantly learning? How can everyone touching the value stream be actively engaged in operating it correctly and continually improving it?
  22. LEANUX MANAGEMENT “Lean UX management is not about experts providing

    answers, or aligning “resources” to a strategic vision. It’s about providing a system of constraints for people to ask the right questions, find purpose in their work, and be empowered to make decisions and constantly learn & improve through experimentation and failure.”