Lean UX in an Agency Environment

Editor's Notes

1. How many in startups or product organizations?\nHow many in agencies?\n
2. Great definition of Lean UX that hits on some of the key points:\nGet from idea to experience as quickly as possible\nDecrease risk and waste\nDesign experiences, not documents\nWork in integrated, highly collaborative teams\n\nThe original article was fairly heavy-handed in its view of “deliverables”\n\n
3. At a practical level, it looks like this. \nThis impacts not just your design process, but your entire toolkit and style of working.\n\n\n
4. There’s a natural affinity between this approach to design and the startup world.\n\nDovetails with the whole “Lean Startup” movement.\nAgile development is a natural ally, since it’s predicated on multiple, iterative cycles where you constantly refine your work.\nYour teams are generally small, and everyone (product, design, development) is sitting together.\nContinuous integration practices keep the build green and allow for regular introduction of new designs into a working product environment.\n\nMost of the thought around Lean UX is based on how to implement this inside of a product organization.\n
5. That sounds great, but what if you don’t work client-side?\n\n\n
6. At first glance, almost every aspect of how design agencies are run and structured goes against the tenets of Lean UX.\nProcess is linear and design to manage scope and ensure that what is defined at the beginning is what comes out at the end.\nLots of specialization: visual designers, user experience designers, information architects, user researchers, etc. Natural way to scale.\nSeparation into different functional silos. The creative process is seen as “magic”, resulting in a big reveal. \nSOWs are based on deliverables (wireframes, comps, templates). \nBut what we’re really trying to do is deliver an experience. Everything else is just a different way to represent it.\n\n\n\n
7. So there are some pretty important differences between the way these two kinds of organization approach design. \n
8. The question is whether these are inherently blocking the adoption of Lean UX principles, or rather just different opportunities to innovate.\n\n
9. So there are some pretty important differences between the way these two kinds of organization approach design.\nSome of these are inherent and driven by the client organization.\nIf the client works agile, you can work within that. But if they are watefall, it’s hard to be agile.\nCultural change is the hardest, because we’re used to design happening in a black box.\n\n\n
10. Given all of that, there’s still a lot I think we can do to be more Lean without completely rethinking the agency model.\n\nThere was a recent blog posting by the ECD of AKQA asking whether agencies should be more like startups.\n\n
11. Get the “think > make > check” mentality into the way you work and make sure there you can incorporate the feedback.\nUse goals as a way to measure, or check. \nFigure out how what constitutes success and make sure you have that part nailed.\nGreat design ideas come from everywhere. Collaboration with developers is more than just checking for technical feasability. \nDeliverables should facilitate understanding and communication. They are not the end product.\n\n
12. Here are some simple techniques you can use to make your traditional process more lean.\n\n
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16. Start with a story.\nSketch out the user journey. What are key paths to success?\nDoes it follow a known pattern or interaction? How confident are you that it’s the right solution?\n
17. make it interactive.\n
18. lean UX is not anti-deliverables, but what we design needs to more closely model the end experience.\nFalse positives from static artifacts.\n
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