Lean UX — A Summary from the Ground Floor
By: Tom Connor
Tags: Lean UX, Tom Connor, Blog, Agile, Lean Startup

“Success is not delivering a feature; success is learning how to solve a customer’s problem.” Scott Cook

Lean UX is an Agile project methodology.

Firstly, What is Agile? From the Atlassian site:

Agile is an iterative approach to project management and software development that helps teams deliver value to their customers faster and with fewer headaches. Instead of betting everything on a “big bang” launch, an agile team delivers work in small, but consumable, increments. Requirements, plans, and results are evaluated continuously so teams have a natural mechanism for responding to change quickly.

The Agile Manifesto outlines four key values:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on

the right, we value the items on the left more.

Lean UX, by Josh Seiden and Jeff Gothelf gives a definitive summary of the process and opportunities available with by taking advantage of the Lean UX framework.

Inspired by Lean Startup and Agile development, it’s the practice of bringing the true nature of a product to light faster, in a collaborative, cross-functional way.

We work to build a shared understanding of the customer, their needs, our proposed solutions, and our definition of success.

We prioritize learning over delivery to build evidence for our decisions.

The underpinnings of the learning philosophy that this methodology drives can be neatly explained by the Design Squiggle (Newman) which highlights the uncertainty at the start of any project and the iterative, explorative nature of the process. By being humble enough to accept you might not have all the answers and trusting the process you can find that the end solutions are very different to the ones you might have originally set out to build.

The feedback from the customer and the experiments that are run with each sprint drive the development process. Testing specific hypothesis and looking for outcomes based evidence and feedback rather than just feature building. Is it really adding value? Are you delivering solutions that make your customer awesome!

Value Proposition interface explained by Super Mario

Josh Seiden and Jeff Gothelf go on to highlight the key principles that underpin the Lean UX framework for team Organisation, Culture and Process:

Principles to Guide Team Organization

…the Lean UX principles related to team organization:

Cross-functional teams

Small, dedicated, colocated

Self-sufficient and empowered

Problem-focused team

Principles to Guide Culture

Culture and process are inextricable. Adopting Lean UX means adopting a culture of learning and curiosity. Here are the Lean UX principles that can help guide your culture toward that end state:

Moving from doubt to certainty

Outcomes, not output

Removing waste

Shared understanding

No rock stars, gurus, or ninjas

Permission to fail

Principles to Guide Process

Now that we have a sense of the broader organizational and cultural principles, let’s take a tactical look at how teams need to change the way they’re working: