Just when you thought you had user experience figured out.

Introduction

So you thought you knew everything about user experience (UX).

You know about design thinking, the double diamond, empathising, prototyping, iterating, and it all makes sense.

You thought you had it sussed: you knew that all UX projects started with extensive user research; you knew that prioritised requirements were essential; you knew that a project is judged on its final deliverables.

And then you discover Lean UX, this younger, cooler cousin of regular UX. Suddenly you have to forget everything you thought you knew, right? Well, not exactly.

Lean UX is a different way of approaching UX design. However, it’s still based on several theoretical foundations you’re probably familiar with.

Let’s get into it…

What is Lean UX?

Lean UX is an iterative design approach that focuses on reducing waste in the product development process while maximising value to the end-user.

Lean UX shares many similarities with conventional UX approaches like human-centred design (HCD), such as maintaining a customer-centred perspective.

However, while conventional UX focuses on delivering requirements, the core ethos of Lean UX is to focus on outcomes not outputs. In Lean UX, project success is determined by measuring impact not maximising deliverables.

Lean UX discards conventional research and requirements elicitation, which can be time-consuming, impractical and costly (reducing waste).

Instead of requirements, Lean UX projects start with assumptions, then move from doubt to certainty by building something, getting it in front of users, and learning.

The Lean Research Loop

The Lean UX approach as an iterative project life cycle has been conceptualised as the Lean Research Loop.

As you can see, the loop starts with assumptions and a hypothesis (prediction) to test against, followed by prototyping and iterating to validate the hypothesis and finally measure the impact.

For example:

• Problem: An online business quotation form has a low completion rate and customer satisfaction is low.
• Assumption: The form is too complex and includes too many steps.
• Hypothesis: A shorter, simpler form will increase conversions.
• Measurement: We’ll be confident the hypothesis is supported when user satisfaction reaches 80%.

This example shows the Lean UX focus on the outcome of impacting customer satisfaction, not the output of delivering form feature requirements based on extensive research.

Conventional versus Lean UX

Lean UX does overlap with conventional UX, but there are key differences shown by the diagram and explanations below.

Conventional UX

• Start with user research to discover and define user goals, problems and frustrations.
• Engineer requirements for a solution, all neatly packaged as user stories, prioritised with acceptance criteria.
• Prototype and iterate the solution, flexibly managing requirements as you go.
• Develop, test and validate that all deliverables (outputs) pass acceptance criteria.

Lean UX

• Forget about user research and requirements engineering — this isn’t always practical and is often wasteful.
• Start with assumptions about what would make an innovative product, or how to incrementally improve an existing product.
• Create a hypothesis to test against, so you can validate or reject your initial assumptions.
• Focus on the outcomes of what your project is intended to achieve — measure the impact, not the output of deliverables.

Lean UX foundations

There are four foundations or pillars of Lean UX — most of which you might already be familiar with.

1. User experience (UX) design

User experience encompasses all aspects of a user’s interaction with a brand and its products and services. UX design is therefore the process of placing the user at the centre of the design process to ensure the final product or service is usable, accessible and enjoyable.

2. Design thinking

Design thinking is a non-linear, iterative process, in which designers seek to understand users, challenge assumptions and redefine problems to identify and develop solutions that may not be initially apparent.

3. Agile software development

Agile is a flexible approach emphasises the following (from the Manifesto for Agile Software Development):

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.
• Working software over comprehensive documentation.
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation.
• Responding to change over following a plan.

Lean UX is an incredibly useful technique when working on projects where the agile development method is used.

4. Lean Startup

Ok, so this might be new to some digital UX people.

The philosophy of Lean Startup is about getting products to market efficiently and cost-effectively, which is especially important for new businesses (startups).

Extensive customer research can be time-consuming, costly and can become outdated quickly. The solution proposed by Lean Startup involves a feedback loop called ‘build-measure-learn’.

The idea is to start with market assumptions and create prototypes, working towards a minimum viable product (MVP) by continually testing, iterating and validating the design with customers.

It’s lean as it reduces wasted time, budget and resources in the development of a product.

Lean UX principles

Ok, so we’ve looked at the foundations. Now let’s focus on the principles.

The important thing to realise with Lean UX is that it’s a mindset — a whole cultural ethos of working.

As you’ll gather from the list below, everyone needs to buy into it or it won’t work.

Principles to guide team organisation

• Cross-functional — Project teams comprise professionals working across disciplines and departments. Different perspectives can improve products.
• Small, dedicated, collocated — Teams are limited to 10 people, working in close proximity to improve communication, camaraderie and quality.
• Self-sufficient and empowered — Teams operate autonomously with access to users and resources to work more efficiently and effectively.
• Problem-focused — Teams are focused on a business or user problem, not features to implement.

Principles to guide culture

• Moving from doubt to certainty — Everything is an assumption until proved otherwise. Teams work towards a solution with confidence through a process of enthusiastic scepticism.
• Outcomes, not output — Teams work towards meeting goals (outcomes) not delivering features (outputs) and ultimately achieving a measurable change in human behaviour that creates value.
• Removing waste — Resources are limited and time is precious, so remove anything that doesn’t lead to the ultimate project goal.
• Shared understanding — Teams build collective knowledge of the product and its users, reducing the need for documentation and increasing efficiency.
• No rock stars, gurus, or ninjas — Lean UX emphases teamwork, cohesion and collaboration over reliance on individual performance.

• Permission to fail — Teams need to experiment, trying different ideas that may not work. A positive culture of learning through failure is required.

Principles to guide process

• Don’t do the same thing faster — Lean UX is not about condensing linear approaches into shorter timeframes, it’s about tailoring the approach (iterative) to the medium (software) as appropriate.
• Beware of phases — Work is continuous, not phased. Research, design and testing happen simultaneously, not in linear, processed steps.
• Iteration is the key to agility — Work should be iterative (redesigning a feature until satisfactory), not incremental (delivering a feature in small chunks)
• Work in small batches to mitigate risk — Teams create only the level of design required to move things forward, avoiding big inventories of untested and unimplemented ideas.
• Embrace continuous discovery — User research is ongoing throughout a project, to continue learning what users are doing with a product (quantitative) and why they’re doing it (qualitative).
• Get out of the building — Engage with users in the real world to understand the context of how and why customers use products, and what they need.
• Externalise your work — Display work physically on whiteboards or walls to create a passive, ambient flow of information across the team, helping everyone understand where the project stands.
• Make over analysis — Make something instead of analysing an idea. Creating a testable first version is preferable to debating its merits.
• Get out of the deliverables business — Move away from project documentation and focus on the project outcomes and impact of the product with customers in the marketplace.

So is Lean UX worth doing?

In a nutshell: yes — with some caveats.

In the right environment, with everyone buying into the process, Lean UX can be a quicker, cheaper and more effective way of doing things.

Lean UX’s focus on outcomes and measuring impact over outputs is ideal, as you’re directly aiming to achieve goals rather than working indirectly towards them.

However — and here’s the catch — everyone needs to buy into this approach, from senior managers down to the project team itself.

If you’re not already working this way it’s difficult to unilaterally declare: ‘Ok everyone, we’re doing Lean UX now.’ It needs to be adopted across an organisation, with everyone understanding it and having the cultural mindset to make it work.

There’s also a danger that without proper controls Lean UX just becomes ‘UX on the fly’. Are you really testing a hypothesis? Are you actually measuring the outcomes? Because if you’re not, it isn’t lean UX — you’re just doing stuff with no real framework.

I don’t want to end on a negative, so let’s leave it like this: don’t shy away from Lean UX. Study it, understand how it works, and if it makes sense embrace it and try to adopt it across your organisation as a new way of working. And if it’s not practical to go all in, just take some ideas you find inspiring and adapt them into your usual process.

Sources

Gothelf, J., and Seiden, J. (2021) Lean UX: designing great products with agile teams. 3rd edn. O’Reilly Media, Inc.

Klein, L. (2018) UX for lean startups. 1st edn. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, Inc.

An introduction to Lean UX was originally published in UX Planet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.