Agile, Lean & Lean UX- How to make it all work together!

AMRITA AVIYENTEFounder/CEO, UX Strategy & Design LeadDate My Wardrobe Education

BIT, MS IT, MS HFID (Human Factors in Information Design)

Work Experience

Software Engineer -> 7+ years at Fidelity Investments (Boston, MA)

UX Research Associate -> User Experience Center (Bentley University, MA)

Passion

Tennis, Cricket, Reading, Traveling

Email: amrita@datemywardrobe.com

Twitter: @amrita_ux

Website: www.AmritaAviyente.com www.DateMyWardrobe.com

Agenda

Agile

Waterfall

Lean Startup

Lean UX/User Research

Questions?

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WATERFALL

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4

Waterfall

Sequential steps

[ Analysis -> Design -> Dev -> QA -> UAT -> Prod -> Maint. ]

Tons of documentation

Longer release cycles

Well understood requirements

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Waterfall

Shortcomings

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Waterfall

No Accountability, blame game

Team conflicts

Set meetings

Limited business involvement

Difficult to make changes (sometimes too late)

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

AGILE@amrita_ux

Agile

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AGILE

http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html

Kent Beck– American SWE (Creator of the XP), TDD (Test Driven Dev)

Waterfall/Agile

WaterfallA lot of

documentation

Sequential

Well Known Req

Infrequent Releases

AgileLimited

documentationIterative/

IncrementalReq not well

known

Frequent Releases

AGILE

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Releases

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AGILE

Release

Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4

Iteration 1 Iteration 2Day 1:Iteration Kickoff Day 1:

Iteration Kickoff

Last Day:Retrospective,

Demo

Last Day:Retrospective,

Demo

Shortcomings

Learning curve

Stressful releases

Continuous customer involvement is not always easy

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AGILE

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SCRUM

AGILE Scrum

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Agile software development framework for managing software projects!

WAR Rooms

Best Practices

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AGILE

Small Tracks/Teams

(6-8 people/track: 1 analyst, 1-2 app dev, 1-2 DB dev, 2 Qa)

Best Practices

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AGILE

Daily Scrum

Best Practices

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AGILE

Quiet Time (few hours/day)

Best Practices

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AGILE

Restrospective

Best Practices

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AGILE

Pair Programming

Best Practices

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AGILE

TDD (Test Driven Development)

What worked!

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AGILE

How frequently should you be having a product release?

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Q

… a set of practices & principles aimed at building,

testing and releasing software faster and more frequently!

Continuous Delivery

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AGILE

LEAN@amrita_ux

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End User

Merchant

Scenario-Mobile App

Lean Startup Concepts

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LEAN

Lean Manufacturing: originated in Japan with Toyota Production System

Lean is a set of tools that assist in identification & elimination of waste. As waste is eliminated, quality improves and cost is reduced.

Validated Learning – Business plans have a set of assumptions which must be validated as early as possible

Lean Startup Concepts

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LEAN

Customer Development: Exercise you go through to find the product-market fit

Get out of the Building (GOOB) – Observe the users in real environments

Customer Archetype – based on the data gathered. You need to validate your assumptions for this customer

Value Hypothesis – Does the product/service deliver value to customers

Growth Hypothesis – Test how new customers will discover the product/service

Lean Startup Concepts

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LEAN

Buildo Turn ideas into products

Measureo Get feedback from users

Learno Learn if a pivot is

needed

Build

Measure

Learn

Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

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LEAN

Buildo Smallest version to test your hypothesiso Requires least amount of effort and development timeo Lacks many featureso Prototyping plays an important role in building MVP

Measureo Get feedback – most importantly – act on it!

Learn o Learning Milestones

Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

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LEAN

MVP Ruleo Remove any feature, process, or effort that does not contribute directly

to the learning you seek

Pivot o Change in course/strategyo Can lead to more significant growtho Requires a lot of courage

Post MVP/CMVP o Decision: Pivot or preserve!

When to Pivot?o If hypothesis proven to be false, pivot now. Save effort, time and money

Concierge MVP

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LEAN

CMVP (Concierge Minimum Viable Product): o MVP where you manually guide your user through the

solution to a problemo Short term solution to help you learn how to solve a

customers problemo Mainly used for invalidating company’s growth modelo Helps decide when pivot is neededo Can happen even if initial MVP is successfulo E.g.: Manual delivery of coupons (before building

software)

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Q

How to decide which features to include in MVP?

(Mobile payment app?)

What features to add in MVP (mobile payment app)?

Merchant Appo Accept Payments through smart phone

Customer Appo Registero Add Credit cardo Make Payment

Don’t worry about-

Transaction History (merchant app)

Social Media check-in (consumer app)

Etc.!

Back to Scenario

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How important is quality and design in an MVP?

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Q

Zappos (online shoe retailer)o Founder Nick Swinmurno It is better to observe real customer behavior rather

than ask hypothetical questions

Date My Wardrobe (P2P wardrobe sharing service)o Started with shoe share service idea

More Lean Examples

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LEAN

MVP

Fail quickly and cheaply on order to succeed

Build-Measure-Learn

Pivot

Don’t wait for the product to be built in order to learn

Observe the customer behavior rather than ask what they want. Many times they may not know what they want

Lean Startup Recap

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LEAN UX - User Research@amrita_ux

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Foundations of Lean UX

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LEANUX

LEAN UX

DESIGN THINKING

AGILE

LEAN STARTUP PRINCIPLES

Design Thinking

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LEANUX

“Design thinking is a discipline that uses the designer’s sensibility and methods to match people’s needs with what is technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity”

- Tim Brown (CEO, IDEO)

Take a “people first” approach, imagine desirable solutions

Ideation, prototyping, implementation and learning steps

Solution focused approach to problem solving

Lean Startup/Lean UX

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LEANUX

Build

Product

Measure

Data

Learn

Ideas

Think

Make

Check

LEAN STARTUP + UX = LEAN UX

Eric Ries Build-Measure-Learn Feedback loop Think-Make-Check UX Cycle

Role of Prototyping in Lean UX

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LEANUX

“Lean UX is where Prototyping shines” - Jeff Gothelf (UX Designer and Author-Lean

UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience)

Allows the designer to build the product experience putting in minimum amount of effort and iterate based on feedback.

Choose the right tool for prototyping based on what is to be learned from the MVPFidelity Tool

Paper Prototype Paper

Clickable Wireframes – Low

OmniGraffle, MS Visio

Medium Axure RP, Adobe Illustrator

High Code

What are the similarities/differences between UCD (User Centered Design) and LeanUX?

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Q

UCD/Lean UX

UCDLearn from users

No Agile concepts

No Validating Hypothesis

No way to measure design outcomes

LeanUXLearn from users

+ Agile concepts

Validating Hypothesis

Measure design outcomes

LEANUX

@amrita_ux Lean UX = UCD + agile + lean

Lean UX/AgileLEANUX

@amrita_ux Lean UX is Agile

Cross Functional Teamso Developers, designers, product owners work togethero Greater accountability + faster design process

Limited Documentation o Enough to communicate the designo Since requirements may change, easier to manage

documentation

Traditional/Agile/Lean UX

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LEANUX

LEAN UX is Data Driven

Don’t assume that a new design/feature is better than what came before

Test Everything

You can’t learn if you don’t measure!

Example – Facebook registration process

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LEANUX

LEANUX

Lean UXo Look at a product as a set of hypothesis (rather than

a set of features)o Lean UX is not about adding features. It is about

understanding customers problems and validating if you are correct.

Validate

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IDEA DESIGNPRODUC

T

Validate Validate

LEANUX

Landing Page Test – Have a landing page• Signup button (e.g. to get an early signup)

o Tool: Launchrocko Drive traffic using AdWords, Facebook Ads

Show people real product (or close!)o User Interviews

User Research for Validation

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LEANUX

Wheno Great to understand detailed motivations towards a particular designo Conversation needed (not finite answers)o Environment independento A few users available

Structureo Structured (closed questions), Unstructured (open-ended Q), Semi-

structured (mix of both)

Facilitator Tipso Interact informally (to keep it comfortable)o Observe the usero Let the user think (silence is acceptable)o Come back on track if user distractedo Use mod guide (moderator’s guide) as a guide (not a rule)o Restate when necessary

User Research - Interviews

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LEANUX

What is important?o Contradictory info to your researcho What frustrates the usero Feedback on design and future ideas

Note: watch for body language

Remote?o Acceptable if environment doesn't play a roleo Tool: Facetime, Skype, Hangouts, Webex

User interviews are a great way to incorporate user insights into the product/service requirements

Interviews

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Whato Surveys for large amounts of datao Can be administered online or offlineo Can be complex (based on how many results you get)o Good way to observe trendso Iterative - Good to get survey reviewed by someoneo It’s OK to pilot the survey with smaller set of users

When to use?o Answers are finite (conversation not required)o Large amounts of data needed

User Research - Surveys

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LEANUX

LEANUX

How?o Write clearly, focus on data needed from userso Whether MCQ format or free text responses are needed

Toolso Web-based (Survey Monkey), emails, paper based

Formato < 5 minutes, set expectationso Include subject of survey, purpose and your contact

informationo Better to have multiple surveys of smaller length than

have one long survey

Surveys

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LEANUX

What?o Study of a person or a group through OBSERVATIONo Information is recorded from different vantage pointso Minimal or no interaction, focus on observation. Can

have follow-up interaction

When?o Complex domaino Study the real environment

Look for?o Terminology (new), frustrations, inefficiencies, challenges

User Research - Ethnography

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LEANUX

If your product/service doesn’t have any competitors, go do more research!

Competitor Testingo Run a usability test for a competitor product/service (alone or

with your product)o You are not fixing their mistakes. Make sure you don’t make them.

Landing Page Goal – To convert visitors to userso A/B test – to see which landing page is doing besto fivesecondtest.com – To get feedback on your landing page.

Focus on Branding, Messaging & Call To Action

Never give a guided tour to the user during testing (e.g. while showing a prototype)

User Research

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Lean UX Recap

Lean UXo Lean UX is about validating hypothesiso Lean UX is User Centeredo Lean UX is Agileo Lean UX is Data Driven – Think of Metricso Lean UX fast and cheap (sometimes) –Think of Wasteo Lean UX is Iterative (always) – Think of MVP

User Researcho Interviews o Surveys o Ethnography

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LEANUX

LEANUX NYC 2013LEANUX

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“There are no best practices for Lean UX. We are dealing with unknown unknowns. The land of innovation -Will Evans (Director-UX, TLCLabs)

Don’t listen to users, instead watch their behavior

- Tomer Sharon (Author, “It’s Our Research”, Sr. UX Researcher, Google)

Your user is a person. Treat them like one! (Use natural language)

-Bill Beard – Creative Director of Copy (TheLadders)

Designers are expected to be perfect all the time. And agile doesn’t work that way. Designers must adopt a sustainable pace (instead of coping with Agile) - Jonathan Berger - Designer/Developer (Pivotal Labs)

Nothing kills a new idea faster than common sense

- Luke Williams (Exec Director, Berkley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation)

Good UX = Good Business

- Eewie Chen (Founder, HaaYaa.com)

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Agile/Lean/

LeanUX Q’s?

AMRITA AVIYENTEFounder/CEO, UX Strategy & Design LeadDate My Wardrobe

Thank You!

Email: amrita@datemywardrobe.com

Twitter: @amrita_ux

Website: www.amritaaviyente.com www.datemywardrobe.com