4 reasons why we chose a Lean UX approach
Having successfully completed the user research phase of our capstone project, the team is getting ready to power through the next design phases. As we were project planning for the next 3 months, our capstone advisor suggested we explore Lean UX. Nervous about trying a new approach, after reading into the principles and processes we quickly realized that we had already been practicing some of lean UX philosophy and were excited about learning to practice UX in a more agile manner.
Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden’s Lean UX captures our motivation concisely by saying:
Lean UX allows teams to exploit this new reality to maximize learning, continuously discover the best path forward, and amplify the voice of the customer.
What is Lean UX?
Part designer’s toolkit, part agile software development, part Lean Startup thinking — Lean UX is a collaborative and cross-functional way of working. At the technical level, it is a set of core principles that outlines a design process, team culture, and team organization. If you want to learn more, I highly suggest checking out the book.
After reading some of the book, as well as watching the Lean UX workshop, these are the following reasons we believe that lean UX will be the best approach for re-imaging the MaRS Entrepreneur’s Toolkit.
1. Continuous Engagement
One of lean UX’s foundational philosophy is to interact with the product development team continuously. As we collaborate with MaRS Discovery District’s team to redesign the Toolkit, we wanted to ensure that we meet weekly and use our time together meaningfully. Meeting weekly would allow us to move closer to building prototype deliverables that reflect the team’s shared understanding.
2. Shared Understanding
Through weekly meetings and continuous engagement with the cross functional team at MaRS, the lean UX process will nurture us to make decisions faster and allow us to dive deeper into more strategic conversations at our weekly meetings. This allows us for more opportunities to gather insights that can help the MaRS team make more strategic choices for the Toolkit redesign. The opportunities, discussions and activities will help the capstone team to meet entrepreneur’s educational needs, MaRS business goals and website functionality in the most effective way possible.
3. In the field
From our usability test, we saw that although parts of the Toolkit were designed to help entrepreneurs better search for resources, they didn’t always use it in that way. We really don’t have any idea how the Toolkit will be used until we put it into the field and test it. By putting low fidelity prototypes in front of 2–3 users every week, we quickly get to know what works objectively. We can measure what works, learn, and adjust for the next iteration. This process allows us to approach this project with humility, realizing that our initial prototypes might not be perfect, and we use the feedback to continuously improve the Toolkit’s design.
4. De-risk product development
Our job as design strategists is to figure out how to best meet customer needs (desirable), business goals (viable) , and technical requirements (feasible) to de-risk the Toolkit’s development. By employing a lean UX approach, we quickly test features, learn and iterate so that when we invest time, labor and resources into building the Toolkit, it stands a greatest chance of success. Lean UX provides us with principles and methodologies that are agile and allows us to effectively de-risk the Toolkit development process by continuously aligning the team and test out features quickly. It will allow us to arrive at the intersection of needs, goals, and feasibility in the most effective and efficient way possible.
Have you experimented with Lean UX?
Have you tried lean UX? Considering testing lean UX with your team? Still not sure exactly sure what lean UX means? Tell me about!
