What Lean UX really means for UX professionals?

Lean UX is a concept that has been going around for a couple of years. Does it really means  something new to the field and professionals of UX or is just another way of naming what we are already doing?

Jeff Gothelf, one of the dominant voices in the movement, defined in an article Lean UX  as "the practice of bringing the true nature of our work to light faster, with less emphasis on deliverables and greater focus on the actual experience being designed.

Jeff is right when he suggests putting less emphasis on deliverables. Over the years, User Experience professionals have created a long list of documents with which often we torture our clients. In a quick mental review I could mention:

• Heuristic evaluations
• Personas
• Usability tests
• Iterative prototyping
• Mind maps
• Concept maps
• Sitemaps
• Wireframes
• Storyboards
• Scenarios
• Content inventories 

And so on. For many years it was necessary for us to create this corpus because our disciplines needed techniques, tools and deliverables that position themselves against others. But in the process we lost focus on our customers to whom we spoke an incomprehensible language or at best very distant to his, the business language.

Does Lean UX means that we should not create more deliverables?

No. Lean UX means to me a process for designing products and services that progressively, quickly and efficiently can refine the value proposal for users.

This definition does not include the deliverables as a core concept of what is or is not Lean UX, because often the generation of specific deliverables (although not directly linked to product design) is necessary to achieve the project objectives.

Let me explain this: in the context in which startups move, where Lean UX has its maximum applicability, one of the most important milestones is to raise capital. To do this, entrepreneurs need some kind of documentation (eg. usability testing reports) to investors to justify the need for more money to polish defective product areas or even rethink it completely .

The origins of Lean UX

Most of the concepts behind Lean UX arised with the Lean Startup movement, which was based in Lean methodologies, a particular type of agile processes. The Lean Startup movement was founded by Eric Ries and is based on five principles:

• There are entrepreneurs everywhere
• Entrepreneurship is administered
• Generate validated knowledge
• Innovation measurable
• Process Build-Measure-Learn (build - measure - learn)

Lean terminology, new names for old processes

Although the terminology used by Ries and the Lean Startup movement is different from the one we used as UX professionals, is closely related to processes or techniques we use frequently:

• Generate validated knowledge: is nothing else than doing user testings to obtain information with the purpose of validating the assumptions made during the design phase of a product.
• Measurable innovation: means taking metrics when testing with users, which perfectly could be typical usability metrics (effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction).
• Pivot: is one of the central concepts of Lean terminology. Describes the possibility of changing the course of product design based on knowledge obtained in usability tests.
• MVP (Minimum Viable Product) is what we call a testable prototype.
• Customer development: refers to leaving the cubicle and researching the way users use the product in a real context. It's what we call fieldwork either participant observation, contextual interviews or contextual surveys.

The Lean work process is iterative

The work process suggested by Eric Ries and called Build-Measure-Learn is an iterative process as commonly used in projects of User Centered Design:

What brings Lean UX?

Lean UX brings two changes that I consider interesting for the UX  field :

• A new way of communicate what we do: for many years UX professionals have spoken a foreign  and boring language for business people: "Usability Testing" "Heuristic Evaluation" "Personas" "Mental maps" are some of the strangest and abstract words ever invented. By contrast, the terminology proposed by Lean UX is much closer to the language used within an enterprise, and allows a better understanding and a connection with what we do and the results demanded by the business.
• A refocus of our work: Lean UX proposes to focus on the two most important partners of our iterations: business representatives and users. We must act as interpreters between two actors that at the begging may seem strangers but at the end must become best friends.

What means Lean UX for user experience professionals?

Working under Lean methodology requires some changes to the professionals capacity to deliver better results. Among them:

• Better understanding of the business: this is perhaps the greatest deficit of designers and developers who are well trained in the technical and operational aspects of their disciplines but often lacking and resist the business vision, and results orientation.
• Increased flexibility: the thoroughness that apply certain UX techniques can often make it more difficult to provide rapid and valuable inside to the business. Working with hybrid techniques is a possibility to avoid this.
• Higher speed: means to do all this faster.