"All men dream: but not equally. Those that dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake

in the day to find that it was in vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it

possible."

- T.E. Lawrence, "Lawrence of Arabia"

THOMAS WENDT UX Strategist

Surrounding Signifiers

thomas@srsg.co @thomas_wendt

WILL EVANS Managing Director The Library Corporation

will@tlclabs.co @semanticwill

WHO ARE WE?

#NYInnovates

The problem with much software development and UX Design is that you spend months doing research, writing

requirements, designing and building software…

and discover no customer or user cares.

The problem with much software development and UX Design is that you spend months doing research, writing

requirements, designing and building software…

and discover no customer or user cares.

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.

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?

Lean* UX

#WTF?

*By Lean UX most people really mean

“UX in the context of the Lean Startup Method”

Term coined by Janice Fraser, Founder of LUXR

“Waste is any human activity which absorbs resources, but

creates no value.”

- James P Womak and Daniel T. Jones, Lean Thinking

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.

Waterfall is a pejorative term used by Agilistas to describe traditional SDLC

WHAT IS LEAN STARTUP? A post-positivist apologetics of a “movement”.

“A Startup is a human institution

designed to deliver a product or service

under conditions of

extreme uncertainty”

– Eric Ries

If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know

what you're doing.

- W. Edwards Deming

Zach Nies

SO, THIS…

Your team should maximize for: LEARNING

FOCUS

While Minimizing: CYCLE TIME

SOME BASIC TENETS Uncover your customers’ pain points through research

Invalidate your assumptions

Generate many problem options

Frame problem options as hypotheses

Embrace multi-solutions experiments

Learning isn’t failure

Amplify what works

DIFFUSION OF INNOVATION

GOOB (GET OUT OF THE BUILDING) Hypotheses, Not Requirements

Focus on Learning Use Iterative Design & Testing

Small Batches = Less Risk Practice “Respect for People”

Perform Root Cause Analysis – 5 Whys

Core Lean Startup Concepts

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.  People new to customer research are really bad!

7.  When a customer interview is guided, it almost never provides opportunity for serendipitous insights to emerge.

Deconstructing Lean Startup

WHAT is LEANUX?

PRINCIPLES OF LEAN UX •  Balanced team

Design + PM + Development = One team •  Externalize thought process •  Flow: Think > Make > Check •  Research to understand Problem Space •  No proxies between customers and team •  Collaborative Sense-making •  Generative Ideation: It’s about optionality •  Formulate many small tests & measure outcome

SENSEMAKING HOW DO WE MAKE SENSE OF THE WORLD SO THAT WE CAN ACT?

LEAN STARTUP BERRYPICKING MODEL

CYNEFIN

The place of your multiple affiliations or belongings.

CREATING OPTIONS COLLABORATIVE DESIGN

TECHNICALLY THIS IS CALLED A CHARRETTE*.

CREATE PITCH

CRITIQUE

MINIMUM VIABLE PRODUCT A MOST MISUNDERSTOOD TERM

WHAT IS AN MVP?

“The minimum amount of effort you have to do to complete exactly one turn of the Build-Measure-

Learn feedback loop.”

Your team should maximize for: LEARNING

FOCUS

While Minimizing: CYCLE TIME

4 KINDS OF MVP Exploration An interaction with the customer that focuses on investigation his or her problems to understand past behavior and see if it is top of mind

Pitch An interaction with the customer that attempt to sell the product to a customer in exchange for some form of currency: time, money, or work.

Concierge Delivering the product as a service to the customer to see if the delivery matches the customer’s expectations.

Prototype A small, testable model whose sole purpose is to get feedback from a customer.

A danger with iterating through prototypes during the solution interview stage is that it is quite easy to get carried

away and end up with more than you need for you MVP.

In order to reduce waste and speed up learning, you need to pare down your

prototypes so that all you have left is the essence of your product:

The MVP.

Reducing the scope of your MVP not only shortens your development cycle, but also

removes unnecessary distractions that dilute your products messaging.

Your MVP should be like a great reduction sauce – concentrated, intense, and flavorful.

STEPS TO MVP

1.  Start with your customer 2.  Start with the Number One Problem 3.  Eliminate nice-to-haves & don’t-needs 4.  Repeat Step 3 for your Number Two & Number 3

Problems 5.  Consider other customer requests – prioritize

them as well 6.  Charge from day one (if you can) 7.  Focus on learning, not optimization or scaling

MINIMUM SUCCESS CRITERIA

•  Show to X number of people? •  What is the conversion rate? •  What % of people will validate? •  What is the minimum “signal” for

you to continue with this? •  Who will give you currency?

METRICS & MEASUREMENT

In a project, the purpose of analytics is to find your way to the right solution before your money

runs out.

WHAT MAKES A GOOD METRIC? A good metric is comparative Being able to compare a metric to other time periods, groups of users, or competitors helps you understand how things are moving

A good metric is understandable If teams can’t remember and discuss your most important business KPIs, its much harder to use data for for collaborative decision making

A good metric is a ratio or a rate •  Ratios are easier to act upon •  Ratios are inherently comparative •  Ratios are good for uncovering interesting tensions between

apparently opposed forces

VANITY VS ACTIONABLE METRICS

Vanity metrics might make you feel all awesome and shit, but they don’t

change how you act.

Actionable metrics change your behavior by helping you choose a

course of action.

Counting followers and friends is nothing more than a popularity contest. It’s useless. It doesn’t

tell your team what action to take next.

EIGHT VANITY METRICS TO AVOID

•  Number of page views •  Number of unique visitors •  Number of followers •  Number of likes •  Number of comments •  Time on site •  Emails collected •  Number of downloads

A QUICK REVIEW

LEAN UX CYCLE

PRINCIPLES OF LEAN UX •  Balanced team

Design + PM + Development = One team •  Externalize thought process •  Flow: Think > Make > Check •  Research to understand Problem Space •  No proxies between customers and team •  Collaborative Sense-making •  Generative Ideation: It’s about optionality •  Formulate many small tests & measure outcome

Your startup should maximize for: LEARNING

FOCUS

while minimizing: CYCLE TIME

READING RECOMMENDATIONS

   

Thanks!

THOMAS WENDT @thomas_wendt thomas@srsg.co

WILL EVANS @semanticwill will@tlclabs.co