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By Jeff Gothelf
Lean UX: Getting Out Of The
Deliverables Business
Published on March 7th, 2011inUsability , User Experience with123 Comments
User experience design for the Web (and its siblings, interaction design, UI design, et al) has
traditionally been a deliverables-based practice. Wireframes, site maps, flow diagrams, content
inventories, taxonomies, mockups and the ever-sacred specifications document (aka The Spec)
helped define the practice in its infancy. These deliverables crystallized the value that the UX
discipline brought to an organization.
Over time, though, this deliverables-heavy process has put UX designers in the deliverables
business measured and compensated for the depth and breadth of their deliverables instead o
the quality and success of the experiences they design. Designers have become documentation
subject matter experts, known for the quality of the documentsthey create instead of the end-sta
experiencesbeing designed and developed.
When combined with serial waterfall development methodologies, these design deliverables end
consuming an enormous amount of time and creating a tremendous amount of waste. Waste is
defined as anything that is ultimately not used in the development of the working product.
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Engaging in long drawn-out design cycles risks paralysis by internal indecision as well as missed
windows of market opportunity. Image by Claire Murray.
As organizations struggle to stay nimble in the face of an ever-changing marketplace that is
disrupted constantly by incumbents as well as start-ups, getting to market fast becomes top priori
Engaging in long drawn-out design cycles risks paralysis by internal indecision as well as missed
windows of market opportunity. In other words, by the time the company decides internally how th
product should be designed, the needs of the marketplace have changed.
Waterfall software development looks something like this:
Define!Design!Develop!Test!Deploy
The design phase typically breaks down like this:
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Wait for requirements definition to take place and get approved!
Consume requirements documents!
Develop high-level site maps and workflows!
Gain consensus and approval!
Develop screen-level wireframes for each section of the experience!
Present to stakeholders and gain consensus and approval!
Create visual designs for each wireframe!
Present to stakeholders and gain approval (after repeated cycles of review) !
Write The Spec, detailing every pixel and interaction!
Usability test for future improvements!
Hand off to development for review, approval and start of implementation
This phase can take anywhere from one to six months depending on the scope of the project,
leaving many wasted hours and much designer frustration in its wake.
Enter Lean UX.
LEAN UX
Inspired by Lean and Agile development theories, Lean UX is the practice of bringing the true
nature of our work to light faster, with less emphasis on deliverables and greater focus on the
actual experiencebeing designed.
Traditional documents are discarded or, at the very least, stripped down to their bare componentsproviding the minimum amount of information necessary to get started on implementation. Long
detailed design cycles are eschewed in favor of very short, iterative, low-fidelity cycles, with
feedback coming from all members of the implementation team early and often. Collaboration with
the entire team becomes critical to the success of the product.
Interestingly and not surprisingly, one of the immediate casualties of Lean UX is the stereotypical
solitary designer, working silently in a corner for a period of time, inviting only occasional peeks at
their work before its done. This mindset is also the biggest obstacle to wider adoption of this
practice.
Lets take a look at the Lean UX process:
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Stay lean and focus on the experience, not the paperwork.
Looks familiar? It should if youre familiar with Agile or its derivatives. Lightweight concepting kick
off the process. This can be done on a whiteboard, a napkin or a quick wireframe. The goal is to
get the core components of the idea or workflow visualized quickly and in front of your team.
The team begins to provide their insights on the direction of the design as well as its feasibility.Changes are then made to the original idea, or perhaps its scrapped entirely and a new idea
proposed. The initial investment in sketching is so minimal that there is no significant cost to
completely rethinking the direction. Once a direction is agreed upon internally, a rough prototype
helps to validate the idea with customers. That learning helps to refine the idea, and the cycle
repeats.
Whats most important to recognize here is that Lean UX is focused strictly on the design phase
of the software development process. Whatever your organizations chosen methodology (waterfa
Agile, etc.), these concepts can be applied to your design tasks.
ISNT THIS JUST DESIGN-BY-COMMITTEE?
Lean UX encourages you, the designer, to show your work early and often to the team, collect the
insights and build that into the next iteration of the design. To many folks, this sounds like the
dreaded design by committee approach, which has killed many designs in years past.
In fact, the designer is still driving the design by aggregating all of that feedback, assessing whatworks best for the business and the user, and iterating the design forward. By providing insight int
the design work to your teammates sooner rather than further down the design road, you
accomplish the following:
1. Ensure that youre aligned with the broader team and the business vision;
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Lean UX Is Not Lazy UX
It may seem at first that this is a lazy approach to UX, that the goal is simply to do less work. On
the contrary, youre actually using all of the tools in your UX toolkit. Sketching, presenting,
critiquing, researching, testing, prototyping, even wireframing these all get a solid workout in
each cycle of the process. The trick is to use these tools when appropriate and, more importantlyto use them at the depthappropriate for the immediate problem youre trying to solve for the
business.
DESIGNERS NEED TO FEEL IN CONTROL OF THEIR WORK
But Im giving up control of my design! is one of the most often-heard complaints from designers
who try out Lean UX. Their concern is that by collecting feedback from non-designers, they will be
less valuable to the team and be relegated to the role of menial pixel-pusher.
Holding on to the concept and avoiding the unnecessary is vital in Lean UX. Image by Kristian
Bjrnard
By staying lean, however, the frequent collection of team-wide feedback actually minimizes the
time spent heading down the wrong path. The designer continues to drive the design, but the
guardrails (i.e. constraints) become more visible with each iteration and review. Basically, if you
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spend three months perfecting a design only to find out after launch that it fails to meet customers
needs, then youve just wasted three months of your life, not to mention your teams.
Lean UX also speeds up development time. By giving the team early insight into the designs
direction, it can begin to lay the groundwork for that experience. This foundational coding phase
helps to expose feasibility challenges in the proposed solution. The time, material and resources
available then help to prioritize the products elements, separating the parts that get built from thothat get pushed out or reduced in scope. All of this affects where the designer focuses their energ
thus minimizing waste.
PROTOTYPING: THE FASTEST WAY BETWEEN YOU AND YOUR
CUSTOMERS
Lean UX is where prototyping shines. As with the initial sketches, focusing the prototype on critica
components of the experience is essential. Pick the core user flow (or two), and prototype onlythose screens. The fidelity of the prototype ultimately doesnt matter, so create it the way you kno
best. Once created, it will be immediately testable by any and all users.
Successful lean prototypes have been created with code, with design software such as Adobe
Fireworks and even with PowerPoint. At times, your client (internal or external) will demand a leve
of fidelity that helps them better visualize the experience. Work with the tool that is most
comfortable and fastest for you and that delivers just enough fidelity for the client.
Next, get that prototype in front of everyone who matters internally, and validate whether youremeeting the needs of the business.
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Diagram of the iterative design and critique process. Warfel, Todd Zaki. 2009. Prototyping: A
Practitioners Guide. New York: Rosenfeld Media.
Most importantly, get the prototype in front of customers. Bring them in regularly to test the
workflows, ideally once a week. You dont need to test with many customers. Jakob Nielsen found
out that after five participants, the odds of finding new roadblocks in the experience were low. If yotest regularly, you can cut the number of participants per week to three. This will also cut costs.
Collect feedback. Figure out what worked and what didnt. Tweak the prototype. Hell, gut it if you
have to: thats the beauty of Lean UX. The investment youve put in at each phase is so minimal
that rethinking, reconfiguring or redesigning isnt crushing in workload or ego-bruising.
Once validated, demo your updated prototype to the team. Explain the flows, the user motivations
and why you designed it the way you did. The prototype has now become your documentation. It
The Spec. Very little (if anything) more is needed. Regardless, youre there to answer anyquestions that come up. The strength of Lean UX here is that, with the design validated, the
designer is now freed to move on to the next core component of the experience, instead of
spending six weeks creating a design-requirements document and pixel-perfect specs.
Prototyping puts the power of validating the designs direction much more quickly in the hands of
the ultimate decider: your customers. They are the ones with whom the design will speak for itself
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and in the environment where it will ultimately have to succeed.
MAINTAINING A HOLISTIC V IS ION
But what about my vision? By chopping the design up and delivering it piecemeal to the team an
ultimately, customers, Im compromising on my vision of the product and putting out a sub-standaexperience!
Lean and Agile Development are called for! Image by Kristian Bjrnard
UX designers have traditionally worn many hats. You now have another to add to the hall tree:
keeper of the vision. In this new role, yourresponsibility is to keep an eye on the big picture. Lean
UX forces you to think of the experience in prioritized chunks. Ultimately, those chunks all have to
roll up into one cohesive product. That cohesive product is your vision. Even as the design shiftsand morphs through iterations and customer feedback, you are always designing towards that
greater goal. Increasing time on site for returning customers could be a vision. Deliver content
faster and in a more contextual manner could be another. Regardless of how the design shifts,
these goals drive your work.
It wont be easy. In the past, those hard-won, comprehensive, approved deliverables authorized
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you to design in a specific direction. With Lean UX, the iterative cycle and the frequent varying
opinions will inevitably create conflicts with your vision. This is where you push back. Use the
stated vision to help sort out conflicting feedback and focus your efforts on the end goal.
DELIVERABLES FOR MAINTENANCE DONT MAKE SENSE ANYMORE
Documentation has long served as a way for organizations to maintain their software. It becomes
reference tool to understand the decisions of the past, which inform the decisions of the present.
While this may make sense for complex business rules, it doesnt make sense for design. The fina
product isthe documentation. It isthe experience. Thick deliverables created simply for future
reference regarding the user experience become obsolete almost as soon as they are completed
When a question arises about how something should behave in the UX, going through that
workflow in the product to see what happens is easy enough. The old kind of documentation is
waste and draws effort away from solving current design problems.
HOW DOES CONTENT STRATEGY AND PLANNING F IT IN?
Websites and applications that are focused on heavy content delivery (as opposed to task- or
function-based websites) will need some up-front planning and documentation. Getting right down
to the level of the page and article may not be necessary, but getting enough of an idea of the typ
of content that will be delivered and a sense of its hierarchy is essential to getting to that first sket
and prototype. Once the team grasps the scope and type of content needed for the experience,
work can begin as the experience is refined.
Can It Be Done At My Organization?
At the risk of oversimplifying, lets look at two types of organizations: the internal software/design
shop and the interactive agency.
For internal software/design organizations, the transition to Lean UX is well within reach. You are the problem-solving business, and you dont solve problems with design documentation. You
solve them with elegant, efficient and sophisticated software. Working in these new attributes
should ultimately be an easy sell internally because you are advocating for more collaboration,
more conversation and earlier delivery to customers. Yes, the culture will have to shift shipping
what amounts to the minimum desirable product can be a tough pill to swallow for those used to
big-bang releases. However, the ability to make quicker decisions along the way, informed by
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regular customer feedback, should ultimately trump these concerns.
Interactive agencies have it a bit tougher because they are in the deliverables business. They
get paid for their documentation and spend a lotof time creating it. A specialist creates each
document, and they charge for that time. Reducing those efforts means reducing revenue.
Lean UX proposes that the shortfall in up-front revenue generated by deliverables can easily bemade up, and then some, by delivering higher-quality work, faster, to the client. The process has
be modified slightly, though:
Lean UX process for an interactive agency.
The core difference with the agencys process is the regular and frequent involvement of the clien
Set up twice- or thrice-weekly 30-minute reviews with them. Set the expectation that youll be
showing rough, directional work and that youll want their feedback. Each time you review a
directional sketch with your client, theyll notice the evolution and progress. Their feedback will wo
its way in and, like an internal stakeholder, theyll gain that sense of ownership.
By involving the client in the process, by iterating the design quickly and by testing the iterations
with real customers, you will reach an optimal solution in less time than before.
In agency-land, less time typically means less revenue, which could potentially be the death knell
for Lean UX. But while the output took less billable time to create, it will likely be more effective an
will bring the customer back to your shop more frequently than in the past. In addition, youve mad
the client part of the process. This is empowering, and clients like that feeling.
This is not an easy change because agency culture has been the same for many decades. Only
the boldest agencies will take this on. But those that do will find greater success from it and willquickly be imitated. These ideas are worth piloting on an internal project; perhaps the redesign of
the agencys website. Prove that they work, and then branch out to actual clients.
I M A CONSULTANT/FREELANCER. DOES THIS MAKE SENSE FOR ME?
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Consultants are, in essence, an agency of one. It stands to reason that the agency process could
work in this situation as well. Constant feedback and iteration with the client will engender the sam
feelings of trust and co-ownership. The challenge for the consultant/freelancer is the amount of
time they can dedicate to each client. Assuming they can handle multiple projects or clients
simultaneously, providing the level of attention and communication necessary to maintain a true
Lean UX process becomes difficult. In this case, falling back on a slightly deeper level of
documentation makes sense to keep concurrent projects moving forward.
Optimize your workflow and win time. Image by Kristian Bjrnard
Its worth mentioning that one big challenge for Lean UX to be successful in any of these settings
the use of offshore development vendors. One of the fundamental principles needed for Lean UX
succeed is collaboration ideally in real time and place it can even work via Skype or other virtu
meeting technology. When a vendor has minimal contact with your design group and requires a
certain level of documentation in order to produce work, Lean UX may not work in its entirety.
Lean UX is being actively used by a growing number of organizations. The way TheLadders hasimplemented it in a recent effort is an example of keeping deliverables light, fostering greater
collaboration and achieving goals successfully.
Conclusion
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Jeff Gothelf is a user experience designer, Lean UX advocate, frequent public
speaker and blogger based in metro NYC. He has spent his career designing
elegant, efficient and sophisticated experiences for clients big and small. He is
currently the Director of User Experience at TheLadders.com where he helps
jobseekers and recruiters make meaningful connections with each other.
Previously Jeff helped shape the designs of AOL, Webtrends and Fidelity. Jeff
publishes his thoughts on his blog and on Twitter
Lean UX is an evolution, not a revolution. UX designers need to evolve and stay relevant as the
practice evolves. Lean UX gets designers out of the deliverables business and back into the
experience design business. This is where we excel and do our best work. Lets become experts
delivering great results through these experiences and forgo the hefty spec documents. It wont b
an easy road. Culture and tradition will push back, yet the ultimate return on this investment will b
more rewarding work and more successful businesses.
(al) (vf) (sp)
FOOTNOTES:
Jeff Gothelf - http://uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com/author/jeff-gothelf/?rel=author
Usability - http://uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com/tag/usability/
User Experience - http://uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com/tag/user-experience/
With a commitment to quality content for the design community.
Made in Germany. 2006-2013. http://www.smashingmagazine.com
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