What is the Lean UX process? Like Lean Startup, Lean UX follows an iterative process of formulating hypotheses and designing solutions to specific problems to develop a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). This translates into a space for companies to research, learn, and innovate through experimentation and collaboration with real users.
👀 What you should know about Lean UX Canvas
To achieve a clear work process, we recommend Lean UX Canvas, a tool that allows focused and multidisciplinary teams to have a common understanding of the problem to be solved.
As in the Lean Startup methodology, the Lean UX Canvas starts with the definition of objectives, metrics, hypotheses to validate, and experiments to conduct.
This canvas will help you record the process, the learnings and the knowledge generated in each iteration step by step, as well as to maintain alignment within the team.
🚀 If you want to try the Lean UX process:
Here we share some recommendations and key questions to ask when you start working with your team:
1. Business problem identification
What business problems are you trying to solve?
This phase is the definition of the problem. As in any lean methodology, it is important to spend some time identifying and defining the problem(s) to be solved. Avoid jumping to conclusions!
2. Business results
How will you know that the identified problem has been solved? What needs to be measured? What business metrics are related to the problem you are trying to solve? Are they qualitative or quantitative?
3. Users
What type of users or customers should you focus on first? What user groups have this problem? Get information about your users and group them according to similarities in relevant factors related to the problem to be solved.
4. User results and benefits
Why would users be interested in your product or service? What benefit would they get from using it? Decide which metrics will help you measure the results.
5. Solutions
What can we do to both solve our business problem and meet the users' needs? Identify and analyse the most important and easy solutions that could be executed in a short timeframe and select the most feasible according to your business needs.
6. Hypothesis
Combine quadrants 2, 3, 4, and 5 in the following hypothesis statement:
"We believe that [🚀business results] will be achieved if [👤the user] manages to [❤️ benefit] from the [📱functionality]."
Important: Each hypothesis should focus on a single functionality.
7. What is the first and most important thing to learn?
Identify the riskiest assumptions for each of the hypotheses included in quadrant 6. Then, determine which is the riskiest one to undertake right now.
8. What is the least amount of work needed to learn something VERY IMPORTANT? (Our favourite part !!!! 👯♀️)
Design experiments to learn as quickly as possible whether the riskiest hypothesis is true or false.
Use this chart to understand the relationship between the different quadrants about the business and users, and the key questions to consider.
Are you ready for the first iteration with the Lean UX canvas?
In case you still have doubts on how to apply the Lean UX method, check out Hotjar's case study, a behavioural analytics company that is a reference in UX Research. They share the 3 key phases to consider within the “customer-centric” process in order to define the hypotheses and objectives.
The 3 phases are:
💡 Think
Think with your team on potential areas for improvement, base these ideas on evidence (customer feedback, user research, competitor benchmark, usability tests). Once the key findings from each point have been compiled, you will be able to define the problem more clearly and spot the most important areas for improvement to work on.
🎬 Make
Key moment for designers and programmers to make a small product sample with which to start experimenting.
👩🔬 Check
The moment where the experiments begin. You can use tools such as surveys or A/B tests to determine if the hypothesis was correct. If the key objectives are met, then it can be included as a new design. If it doesn't improve the customer experience, go back to the Think phase and run a new experiment.
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