The Benefits of Lean and Agile UX in Solving Real-World User Problems
What is UX Design Framework?
A user experience (UX) design framework refers to a step-by-step design process to solve user problems. The framework serves as a roadmap for the team to gain a thorough understanding of the real issue before even starting to think about possible remedies.
Understanding the concepts of different UX design frameworks can help you identify the right one to adopt for your next project to solve human-centered problems.
The Traditional UX Framework
A classic example is the waterfall. It follows a sequential order of (1) Empathize (2) Define (3) Ideate (4) Prototype, and (5) Test to develop the solution. The key is that each step will only proceed after the previous step has been finalized.
As the solution is been built from the bottom up and is well documented in each phase, the project is relatively easy to manage. There is not a lot of uncertainty and everyone involved knows the drill very well.
The drawback is that it often takes too much time to publish a new version of the product to the market. By the time the product is finally ready, the market demands might have already been shifted elsewhere. Additionally, lots of time and money are spent on design and development.
Modern UX Frameworks: Lean UX vs. Agile UX
While the waterfall approach works in some scenarios, given the rapid-changing market, UX lifecycles that are highly collaborative and capable of supporting fast iteration speed are more desired nowadays.
Lean UX, deriving from the concept of lean manufacturing, is designed to focus on systematically minimizing waste along the development cycle and quickly generating minimum viable products (MVPs), involving users to test ideas as early as possible. Lean UX involves a product-driven approach to quickly iterate and test out design ideas. (For more information on this approach, I recommend the book “Lean UX: Designing Great Products with Agile Teams” by Jeff Gothelf, and Josh Seiden)
On the other hand, agile development, often referring to the modern software development approach to roll out, test, and iterate new product features swiftly, is similar to lean UX’s concept but more engineering-centric. The idea of agile UX is to integrate UX practices such as design thinking in the agile process as a supportive resource to help developers streamline the iteration of new product features.
While different, both lean and agile UX frameworks are very similar in the sense that they first prioritize quickly deploying the product and focus on validation and iteration later. Ultimately, this means that spending time performing thorough user research prior to the design and development phase is challenging. Instead, the frameworks advocate for building out the prototypes and then conducting more post-launch research in each iteration.
Which Framework Works the Best?
Oftentimes, in academic projects, we were taught the traditional waterfall process. Though it works well for projects with a smaller scope and clear problem definition, for most real-world projects, there are simply fewer resources (e.g. time, budget, etc.) for us to spend on each step of the process. Thus, lean and agile UX design frameworks become more appealing options.
For example, at UNC Blue Sky Innovations Lab, we work on projects that require fast production in cooperation with many industrial clients. In order to deliver quality results on time, choosing the agile and lean UX frameworks makes the most sense.
There are other types of UX frameworks beyond those discussed in this article, and each has its own tradeoffs and benefits. When it comes to choosing a framework, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Bear in mind that no matter which framework you decide on, educating your coworkers and clients on the importance of human-centered design concepts is the ultimate key to effectively solving user problems.
