I bought and watched the Lean UX video course from O'Reilly a while back. TOTALLY AMAZING! Well, that might be a little over the top, but I have been in the US a while now. But yeah, this is a really great course. Highly recommended.
The Lean UX cycle is pretty much build, measure, learn. Taking small deliberate steps moving from doubt to certainty. I say doubt because that is what it is, or it could be "confidence". However, that confidence might be false. You have to really find out if what you are building is needed, wanted, useful, and will be used. The steps are:
- Build rapid prototypes to test market assumptions
- Get feedback
- Produce MVP
- Repeat from 1
To get an idea of what Lean UX is about, checkout this video by Nordstrom. These guys do weekly sprints, and base themselves directly where the target audience are - in the middle of a store! This is the heart of design thinking. It is also the fundamental of Affinity too - how can you create something for someone if you are too far removed? The "reality" factor won't be there. If you are in the store you could just grab someone and say "would you mind telling me what you think about this". The Nordstrom team are tasked to fail 80% of the time. Yes, really. One of the most beneficial things I have learned in recent years is to fail more. Not only fail more, but fail often. This definitely takes the nervousness out of development. It also means that you have to do the right thing 20% of the time.
Overview of Lean UX
Lean UX is moving from doubt to certainty. Taking small steps towards that certainty. Starting with a hypothesis statement such as We believe that doing xxx for yyy will achieve zzz then stating all the assumptions the premise is based on. Decide and work out what the first test of those assumptions. Create an MVP. Get out and find your audience. Get the team aligned towards the target. Repeat. In summary:
- State your desired outcome
- Declare your assumptions
- Hypothesise write the first test
- Make an mvp
- Get out of the building
- Team synthesis
- Repeat
To gain that certainty one is on the right path one has to compare where we are to where we want to be, or where the user should be. I like this idea as it ties in with testing and use of metrics We'll know this when we see xxx market feedback
Resources
- Popapp.in is a great rapid prototyping tool