- Robert Hutchins

One workshop I especially liked was Jeff Gothelf’s ‘Lean UX: A Seasoned Approach to Designing in Agile’.

What is Lean UX? Lean UX is inspired by Lean Startup and Agile development theories. It’s about reducing waste: Light faster, collaboration, cross functional, less emphasis on deliverables and more focus on the actual user experience. The more shared understanding we have, the thinner the spec is.

So in essence, our designs are hypotheses; let’s validate or invalidate those hypotheses as quickly as possible so that we can spend time going down the right path and less time going down the wrong paths.

Lean UX brings usability testing to every sprint to validate design hypotheses with customers, and data is used to settle subjective issues.

According to Jeff, when we have the designers, the developers, and the business owners all in the same room sort of working on solving a problem collaboratively, suddenly all that subtly and nuance as to what design is about becomes transparent. The value of the designer becomes even more evident when the collaboration is working at the highest levels. The expertise and the different disciplines that all go into software design and user experience design start to emerge and become very obvious to the team.

I recommend watching this 5 min video where Jeff talks about ‘How to do Lean UX in 5 easy steps’. Or check out his Lean UX presentation on SlideShare.

But even with a project that is “documentation-heavy”, you have to be careful not to fall into the “to do list trap” of just crossing off things. Here’s why: You can get all your design work done in a timely matter, but if the design sucks, who benefits? Certainly not the user, and definitely not your company. Yes, you will “look good” in the short term, in that management sees you are “hitting your dates”… but you will be burned later if the design was rushed and ill-concieved. Trust me, I’ve been there (a few many times).

But how do we, designers, measure our own productivity? There are many different techniques I have seen and tried. But in the end, I think UX design isn’t about “productivity” it’s more about problem solving, and making a difference for users. So I look at satisfaction (and conversion rates) as a more important personal metric around my design work than the number of UI “pieces” I can crank out in a week.

In addition to the above, we need to make sure that we have time to refine, iterate, and fail. Yes, fail. We learn a lot by piloting early designs with users and finding out what doesn’t work. We need to Identify key milestones, follow the process that we are comfortable with, and focus on quality. Keeping in mind, of course, that deadlines are absolutely necessary as a motivator and a way to “focus the brain.”

This past weekend, I came across this video from the PBS special about Steve Jobs after he passed away that resonated with me a lot:

“When you grow up you tend to get told the world is the way it is and you’re life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money.

That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.

Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”

Rail Europe experience map

For smaller projects, however, we could simplify this map into a flowchart with intended outcomes (ie. what you want the user to think and feel at each point).  Then we could do some focus testing to compare the actual results against the intended outcomes.

There’s also a great reference to Tufte. All the data and information is out there. Its a matter of organizing it in context to each other and presenting it visually to allow it to communicate exactly what the goal is.

• When the user is focused on their objective and not on the actual interface itself
• Invisible (user only pay attention to something intuitive when it’s actually not intuitive. What makes something intuitive is actually something personal. We have to know something about the people we are building for
• When Current Knowledge and Target Knowledge are at the same place. There are two ways to accomplish this: Raise Current Knowledge to meet Target Knowledge (Training), or reduce Target Knowledge to meet Current Knowledge (Simplifying)
• Is all about focuses on experience. Trend/ Pattern we see over and over again: Technology > Features > Experience
• Is a result of constant team critique, and critiques are essential to creating intuitive designs.

The way we pay has changed from coins, to paper money, to plastic cards. Now we’re on the brink of the next big shift.

I am definitely looking forward to not having to carry around my wallet :)

Inforgraph on the future of mobile payments

Do you want to find out what those words are? Start by asking them. Visiting your users in their natural environments is probably the best way to start.

Jarred’s team found that personas are a great way to communicate trigger words to everyone on the design team. A persona is a detailed description of a user the team wants to ensure is successful on the site. Listing, within the persona, the trigger words that person would use helps us, the designers, understand how the users’ own language will impact the final design.

According to Jarred, his team never conducted a usability test that didn’t yield tremendous insight into how users react to the links the team is using. It becomes obvious immediately when links are missing the clues the users need to go forward.

This powerful trio — field studies, personas, and usability testing — are a great way to start identifying the trigger words that work for your users.

Dieter Rams, who was featured in critically acclaimed documentary Objectified is one of the most influential design gurus in the world. He has created countless products for Braun, the German white goods company. And he is a man who has influenced Apple’s head of design, Jonathan Ive. Here’s a piece of what he wrote exclusively for the The Daily Telegraph about what makes Apple special:

“Without doubt there are few companies in the world that genuinely understand and practise the power of good design in their products and their businesses. Probably the first example was Peter Behrens and his work for the German company AEG, in the early part of the 20th century. He might be considered to be the founder of corporate identity. Adriano Olivetti was close behind as he transformed his father’s Italian company, Olivetti. Having become aware of this scarcity at the start of my career in the 1950s, I am sorry to report that the situation does not seem to have improved to this day.

I have always observed that good design can normally only emerge if there is a strong relationship between an entrepreneur and the head of design. At Apple this situation exists – between Steve Jobs and Jony Ive.

I am always fascinated when I see the latest Apple products. Apple has managed to achieve what I never achieved: using the power of their products to persuade people to queue to buy them. For me, I had to queue to receive food at the end of World War II. That’s quite a change.

They understand that design is not simply an adjective to place in front of a product’s name to somehow artificially enhance its value. Ever fewer people appear to understand that design is a serious profession; and for our future welfare we need more companies to take that profession seriously.”

Apple is probably the only tech company with a head of design. This makes them both a tech and an industrial design firm… And actually marketing can be added to the mix…