What is Lean UX? — Part One

Story discussing the concept of lean UX — Part One.

Happy new year folks! I hope everyone has been able to take some time off to enjoy the season and the new year.

We’ll begin 2023 with the concept of lean UX. Unlike the “traditional” UX design frameworks (ie. design thinking process), lean UX adopts a level of flexibility and adaptability based on the problem, time restraints, and resources available.

What is Lean UX?

UX design focuses on creating and designing the best user experience by focusing on collecting user research to influence the changes. This often takes a long period of time because the process of finding the right research methods and coordinating with research participants can eat up a fair amount of time. On top of that, analyzing user research also requires a lot of team engagement and back-and-forth communication — which could be extremely time-consuming as well.

Lean UX shares the same objective of creating and designing the best user experience as well. Except this happens in a more of an Agile environment — which is basically quick, iterative cycles that focus on a single feature each time.

Because each iteration cycle in lean UX focuses on a single feature, working collaboratively under time constraints is the basis of getting things done. “Traditional” design processes are shortened to adapt to the team in making quick decisions that can impact the design outcome.