IMG_20160407_153642

07 Apr Improving User Experience with Lean UX

Balancing business and user needs alongside development and budget restrictions can be challenging. To help solve this, Lean UX champions open collaboration. Designers, developers, project managers and business analysts design the solution together from the start.

Lean UX is the practice of bringing the true nature of a product to light faster, in a collaborative, cross-functional way. It reduces the emphasis on thorough documentation while increasing the focus on building a shared understanding of the actual product experience being designed.” – Gothelf and Seiden

From discovery stage research to product design, collaboration is face to face and rapid. The entire team sketches, evaluates and tests ideas together, building and learning quickly. From my own experience of working within a Lean UX methodology, workshops, dev pairing and cross-disciplinary discussion not only moves the project much faster, but creates a better, user-focused product.

In particular, reading Lean UX by Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden has enhanced my understanding of the interplay of agile and lean. Even having participated in agile design and development sprints for a number of years, I still gained a lot from such a comprehensive framework.

As well as the chapter on integrating Lean UX and Agile, there are great sections on how to approach user research as a cross-disciplinary team, collaborative design and championing lean UX across an organisation.

By putting designers, developers, subject matter experts product managers, business analysts, and other competencies together in the same space, and focusing them all on the same challenge, you create an outcome far greater than working in silos allows.”  – Gothelf and Seiden

Lean UX is well worth putting aside a few hours to read.

No Comments

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.