Reddit reviews Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience
We found 11 Reddit comments about Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
I’m a print and basic web designer that’s been making an overhaul towards UI/UX the past few months so maybe I can offer some help. I’m actually working on a mobile app’s case study as we speak! You may have already noticed that UI/UX tends to get many different definitions depending on who you ask. With this said the path I took was focused on research methods (competitor research, demographic research, user testing, etc), UX deliverables (personas, user flows, wireframes, etc), prototyping, high-fidelity design and front-end coding (I’ll touch on that a little more in a bit).
 
When it comes to UX research I found the following resources immensely helpful:
Books (Reading? Yes, reading. Trust me these are worth checking out…pretty short too)
Podcasts (Listen on your commute, while you’re folding laundry, whenever)
Websites (It’s also a good idea to Google some successful UX designer’s portfolios)
 
Basically what UX teaches you is that all design decisions need to be backed by an informed reason. That reason is found by doing proper research and testing.
 
Now for UI design. There’s always Bechance and Dribble for inspiration, but a lot of the pieces you find on there lack context and are merely pretty to look at. So don’t get too obsessed. For software, personally, I’m a Photoshop to Sketch convert. It’s $100 but MAN is it worth it. There’s a number of things that make Sketch attractive (vector based, easy exporting, etc) but I guess the simplest way I can put it is that Sketch just feels…lighter than Photoshop. But it’s really personal preference, if you’re a master at using Photoshop for web design then don’t feel like you have to get Sketch. With that said I HIGHLY recommend investing in Meng To’s Design+Code. While it mainly focuses on iOS design, there is a lot of information that goes across the board for UI design, and it will give you an organized learning method (plus a discount on Sketch).
 
It’s also a good idea to familiarize yourself with Material Design. Google’s presentation of the topic gets a little too in-depth at times so you may just want to Google search for other explanations of Material Design (that’s a bit ironic huh?).
 
Okay so now you know how to design a basic UI right? Well what if you want to make your designs interactive? There’s quite a bit to benefit from actually seeing your designs work (or not work). Over the past couple years there’s been a gigantic influx of prototyping programs. They all have their pros and cons. Personally I use Pixate but at times it can be a little restricting. My iOS developer friend recommends Origami, it has a pretty steep learning curve but I think I may switch to that at some point.
 
The key to becoming effective at UI design is the same with any other form of design: practice, practice, practice.
 
Okay, now on to coding:
 
Depending on your goals you may have to alter your studies a bit. For example, knowing your way around HTML/CSS and jQuery will give you more control of the design process, improve your relationship with developers on your team and make you EXTREMELY marketable. However, in many cases, only a basic knowledge of those languages I mentioned is required (jQuery being more of a bonus). As a designer you may not even touch the coding side of things at all, it really just depends on the team you’re working with. With that said I HIGHLY suggest taking a dive into front-end coding eventually, you’ll hate yourself for not learning it earlier. Ditch dreamweaver too, pickup SublimeText. Team Treehouse and CodeAcademy are fan-fucking-tastic. Learned a lot from their education programs.
 
Whew, if that seems like a lot it’s because it is. Hopefully I broke it down into digestible chunks though. Remember, design is a never-ending learning experience. Don’t stop learning.
Great question!
Sometimes you test an idea, and it turns out it doesn't work, but you feel like it wasn't really a final test because maybe something could be changed and it would work.
I believe I understand what you're asking, and I think the trick to answering it is to change how you think about the problem a bit, so let me try and talk about it a bit.
The right way to approach it I think isn't about testing the idea, but about setting out to learn something. I think if you change that mental model, you can be clearer about what you want to learn, and try more ways of learning it than just regular user testing.
User Testing a Solution
Let me give an example. Lets say you're building a product to sell movie tickets using Amazon Alexa. You have a solution in mind, and you want to test it. You write the dialog, develop the conversational interface, create the list of films etc and ship it to thousands of homes.
Alexa has thousands of customers, but you only sell 27 movie tickets.
What's the result?
Well, you know you failed to sell a lot of tickets. But you don't really know why. Maybe people don't like the movies out this time of year. Maybe they don't like buying tickets whilst standing in their living room. Maybe they don't like buying tickets without hearing reviews. Maybe the way you had them talk to Alexa was awkward and they didn't understand it. It could be all sorts of things. But all you can really say for sure is that you didn't sell many tickets. Have you tested the idea? It's really hard to say. This is the problem I think you're talking about /u/pigmyhawk
So how could we think about this differently?
Well, we could try approaching things a bit differently where instead of saying "is this movie ticket design idea good" we say "is it true that ____?"
For example, instead of saying "is this ticket selling tool for Alexa good" we say "Is it true that people want to buy film tickets with their Alexa?"
Or we say "is it true that people will buy tickets without reading reviews?".
Or "is it true that people will buy movie tickets whilst in their living room?". Etc
See, there are all these different reasons that the original design might have failed, and the reason testing that design idea is so hard is because we're not really sure what we're learning by testing the design.
If instead we focus on what we want to learn, then we can build the right experiment to learn it. Maybe we go watch people interact with their Alexa and see if they even ask about movie tickets. Maybe we test two versions of the design, one with reviews and one without and see if there is a difference. This way we aren't just generically testing the design, but rather trying to learn something we think is important to know the answer to.
So I'm saying I think the solution is to be clearer at the start about what you want to learn, and then designing an experiment, which tests just that thing. If you run several experiments, each time you will learn more and have a better idea if your idea is right or not. That way you aren't testing an instantiation of the idea. You're testing the assumptions on which you base the idea.
Only once you've tested all the things you're most unsure about (and which are most important to your idea being successful) do you actually say "okay, we think we have learn enough that this is our best idea now, lets make it using all the knowledge we have".
----
If right now you're feeling like you didn't really test your idea, then I think the answer is that there are too many things you don't know the answer too. It's like you're doing a science experiment but there are 20 different things you didn't control for, so all the test shows is that one of those 20 things isn't right. You need to test less things at a time, and be clearer about what exactly you are trying to learn and how you are going to measure it.
So the answer is:
There's lots of different ways you can run experiments. They might be interviews and paper prototypes, or surveys, or just watching people looking for something in particular etc.
They might be A/B tests where you decide what you're trying to learn, you design an A/B test which test 2 different versions and compares them. A/B tests can help you because it's not just about which design is right, but about "is this difference important or not". You learn something by comparing the different results.
I've talked too much now, but I think the basic answer to your question is - be clearer ahead of time about what you are trying to learn. Don't test a whole design at once because there are too many moving parts. Instead, identify your assumptions, design experiments to learn if your assumptions are right, be clear about what you're going to measure, and then use what you learn to design better things. If you aren't sure what the results of a test were, it might mean you weren't clear at the start about what you were testing, or how you were going to measure it.
Couple of suggestions for things to look at:
Just started reading UX team of one
and
Lean UX
Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1449311652/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awd_lTi9wb8GSDPDD
I am self taught and design applications for human and system workflows at a Internet security company. I am biased but I don't think a degree will necessarily give you more hands on skills than just finding projects and building a portfolio to show your skills. There are many many different niche categories, every UX professional I have met have different skill sets. For example I tend in a version of lean UX which includes need finding, requirements validation, user testing, workflow analysis, system design, prototyping, analytics, and accessibility design (not in that order). I am interlocked with the engineering team so my job is FAR different than many UX professionals I know who work with marketing teams. They tend to specialize very deeply in research, prototyping, user testing, and analytics. Some UX types code and some use prototyping tools like Balsamiq, UXpin, Adobe etc. There is heavy debate on which path is more useful/safe/ relevant. Where I work I do not get time to code because my team and I feel I provide the best value to our engineering team and internal/external customers by doing the items listed above. The other UX person I will work with me on similar activities but then may be given projects to look at the best options for reusable components and code them up for testing.
TLDR:
Here are some of my resources I found helpful.
(confessions: I've posted these before in other comments but I hope you find it helpful)
Sub-reddits:
Sites:
Books:
Tools (other than typical Adobe design tools):
MISC:
I haven't read this book myself, but "Lean UX" is very popular and covers this exact topic.
https://www.amazon.com/Lean-UX-Applying-Principles-Experience/dp/1449311652
Lean UX
About Face - Essentials of Interaction Design
Great idea. Sometimes goes by the moniker "Lean UX" as in http://www.amazon.com/Lean-UX-Applying-Principles-Experience/dp/1449311652 and http://www.amazon.com/UX-Lean-Startups-Experience-Research/dp/1449334911/ref=pd_sim_b_9?ie=UTF8&refRID=0ZY6P3SYWTKC77QXRKS6
https://www.amazon.com/Lean-UX-Applying-Principles-Experience/dp/1449311652
>I want to design some UI/UX elements for this too and I don't know what should I use for that.
​
Learn how to carry out lean user research ("UX research") before jumping into designing and coding things. Make sure you're solving a legitimate user problem
​
UX and UI are two very different things
​
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lean-UX-Applying-Principles-Experience/dp/1449311652
​
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Validating-Product-Ideas-Through-Research/dp/1933820292/ref=sr_1_1?crid=WJGAFM0WD67M&keywords=tomer+sharon&qid=1567899236&s=books&sprefix=tomer+sha%2Cstripbooks%2C142&sr=1-1
Have a read of Lean UX and also Communicating the User Experience both really awesome with loads of practical tips, tricks, and insights from real world examples