Why a Lean UX Design Process?

Design is a marketing tool. The best marketing tool you can have is a well-designed product.
Annie Wang

How do you create a well-designed product? By focusing on solving the right problems and delivering value to your customers. A Lean UX Design process gives you the tools and system for developing a well-designed product.

Why A Lean UX Design Process

In Designing with Lean UX, Kate Kutter describes UX as

  • a mindset
  • focused on delivering value
  • inspiring the right kind of ideas
  • guides your decisions

What is Lean UX?

In A Lean Design Process for Creating Awesome UX, Annie Wang described Lean UX as a repeatable process that is goal-driven and outcome-focused. Your team has a designer, developer and product manager. Most startups are going to have small teams. They focus on the following principles:

  • Rapid cycles: think, make, check
  • Generate many options and decide quickly which ones to develop
  • Focus on solving the right problems
  • Recognize hypothesis and validate with user feedback
  • Research with users as the best source of information and inspiration

What does a Lean UX Design process look like?

A typical UX Design Process may incorporate the following:

  • Discovery
  • Wireframe
  • Prototypes
  • Validate Internally
  • Summarize
  • Iterate

In Lean UX, Lean doesn’t equal Skinny. Less is more.  You want to build a product that is simple and clear with less features and more details. You want to go through cycles of Think, Make and Check. The key is user feedback and to reduce cycle time, not your build time. Not every product needs to follow the same UX Design Process.

As we develop our own UX Design process, we want to focus on thinking, making and checking. User feedback is key to making products that are simple, clear and easy to use.

Have you created your own UX Design Process?

7 UX Tips for Developers

The success of your website or app depends on creating the best user experience possible. Not all developers have a designer available to help with the design.

7 UX Tips for Developers

You can use the following 7 UX tips to create a better experience for your users:

Prioritize features

When you create a new website or app, you need to decide what features to add, leave out and improve. Prioritizing makes it easier to create a website or app with the right amount of features and helps you to focus on getting it built.

Speed things up

Make sure your website or app is fast and responsive. A page or app that takes to long to load will loose users. Make it as fast as possible to ensure an enjoyable user experience.

Design before you code

Sketch your designs with pen and paper or other prototyping tools. Show your designs to users or even team members. Get their feedback before you write any code. It is easier to change a design before you start writing code. Here’s how you do a UX Design Process:

Track data

Use Google Analytics or other analytic software to help you learn more about your users and how they use your app or website. The more you know, the better decisions you can make when improving your app or website.

Make your UI simple and easy to use

Easy said than done. How do you make the UI better? Keep it clean and consistent. Use readable fonts. Choose larger font sizes and avoid fancy fonts like script or handwriting fonts. Make your navigation simple. Use standard icons and words that people recognize.

Remove or prevent extraneous features

Be ruthless when considering new features. Ask does this feature solve a need? Will majority of our users want it? If you have older features that no one uses, reconsider whether or not you should keep them.

Show informative error messages

Write error messages that tell the user what happened and what to do next. Good error messages can help make your website or app easier to use. Bad error messages only frustrate and irritate users.

When people can’t figure out how to use a website or app, they leave or delete the app. If you want to prevent people from abandoning your app or website, use these tips to make it better.

What tips would you add?