Great User Experience is critical to product success. Can you get great user experience at startup speed? Pathfinder Software's Bob Moll and Bernhard Kappe share how design methods can be applied to the hypthesize-test-learn processes of a lean startup, and the benefits of doing so before product development begins.
This talk was presented at the Chicago Lean Startup Circle.
Organizer of the Chicago Lean Startup Circle. How many are new here? How many are lean startup practitioners? How many are designers or IAs?\n
Bob Moll is our Lead User Experience Designer\nMention Pathfinder, the company Bob and I work for. \nWe work with both startups and established companies to launch successful products. We launch more products in a year than the average product manager does in a career.\n\n\n
The Lean Startup approach is integral to how we work with customers: Advise them on Customer development, practice lean ux, agile development, lean marketing and metrics. We help our customers accelerate, and build capacity so they can do it themselves. \n\n
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It’s a way for lean startup and ux to work together. \n\n
Coined and championed by Janice Fraser of LUXR, person x, y, z etc. Pathfinder is practicing and championing this approach here in Chicago.\n
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Models for building software: \n\nClassic Waterfall: Write Specs, Build Software, Roll it Out and See What Happens.\nModified: Add a lot of testing to deal with bugs at the end. \n\nResult: Crappy software that cost too much to build and took too much time. \n\nLots of failure: Late, Over Budget, Buggy, Hard to Use, Missing Features.\n\n
\nIt’s because you have bad, incomplete, faulty requirements. Business requirements.\nThat’s why we invented agile, that’s why we added UXD. But we never added the feedback loop on the business side! \n
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It’s not unusual for new products to fail. In fact, 9 out of 10 do.\n
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So this is where the lean startup comes in.\n
Lean Startup does not equal cheap and bootstrapped, although some are. Companies like Groupon, Zynga, etc. have lots of capital to apply, and use lean startup methods. \n
Instead it comes from lean manufacturing\n
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The question is, how do you figure out what’s valuable?\n
Both Lean Manufacturing and Agile come from Toyota Production System. The key concept here for us is Genchi Genbutsu (go and see.) \n
In a lean startup, Genchi Genbutsu is turned into Get Out of the Building!\n
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We like to use the lean canvas for documenting business model assumptions.\n\nUse this to document your hypotheses about problems, customer segments, about solutions, unique value proposition, unfair advantages, channels, key activities costs and revenues.\n\nThe one lean ux principle: one team. Get all the heads in the room for this. Share it with the team. \n
Lean ux concept: You are all one team. Get the whole team in the room to brainstorm, timebox it. Put it on a wall. Update it and share with the group and with advisors when you change it.\n
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You use different channels to get earlyvangelists for customer interviews, but usually you drive them to a landing page where you can qualify them (are they in your assumed target market, and can/will they talk to you.) \n\nHere’s where you can start defining your brand and your tone, your visual design. Do it fast, don’t waste a ton of time here, but do it.\n
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If it’s not in their top problems, they’re not likely to take action, let alone pay.\n
UX folks are good at doing these interviews. If you have one, consider pairing with them on this. They understand how to dig out demographics and how to ask questions on how they currently solve problems. \n\n\n\n
\nCard Sorting - if you put the problems on cards, and add new problems that they mention, and put them on cards, you give them someting tactile that makes it much easier for them to perform a prioritization.\n
We think that card sorting makes for more accurate prioritization\n
Find out - through groupings on problems, solutions and demographics: Segments. These segments may have very different problems and solutions, you may need to sell to them in very different ways, and they may have very different revenue models. (Different canvases.)\n\nCapture these in personas - A way of visualizing the customers. A name, a face, their goals, etc. Really useful when you’re thinking about them, and designing for them.\n\n
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This is another great place to pair. UX folks are good at doing these interviews. Good ones know how to avoid the bias that you naturally will show - you want to avoid bias, and avoid selling.\n\n
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Here’s an example of an infographic that Todd Wyder has used for his company to describe his software. Much easier than a big description. Visualize it, save a thousand words.\n
Prototype - Our preference is towards hand sketched screenshots at the beginning. As low fi as possible at this stage, because you’ll be changing this rapidly and often.\n\nLow-fi prototypes - prototype using pencil, paper, post-its, physical objects\n\n\nbring to life a scenario, and have an experience. \n\nSome audiences don’t understand, some times there’s a need for more high fi. - but it’s rare. \n\nExample: A client we work with has a series of physical products around color calibration, color matching, etc. used by professional photographers, designers, etc. This was all about color, so you needed to have higher fidelity prototypes that involved and showed the color. \n\n\n\nStory Flows - In a fixed number of frames (say 8, give or take), show the key points of each of the workflows or business flow your design will address\nLow-fi prototypes - prototype using pencil, paper, post-its, physical objects\nStory video - turn a low-fi prototype or storyboard into a simple video that can be used to validate the idea with customers\nCustomer testing - using created artifacts (low-fi prototype or story video) to conduct customer interviews - can they understand the concept, would they buy it?\nPriority Diagram - what would your product look like if you could only implement 3 features? 5 features? etc.\n\n
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Minimum Viable Product is Not the Minimum Product to Make a Profit\n MVP is: the minimum to Validate a Hypothesis.\n MVP is not static: Interim MVPs\n\n
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Another example: Glif, a kickstarter project for an attachment that lets you mount an iphone on a tripod.\n
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So one of your big risks is that you won’t get to product/market fit. A rule of thumb we use is having customer acquisition costs being less than or equal to one third of lifetime value of the customer. You want to make profit, so you have cost of goods sold, general and administrative, sales and marketing, R&D. If your cost of customer acquisition is too high, you won’t make money. \nYou don’t know what the lifetime value is at the beginning, for a number of reasons - pricing model may not be defined, customer segments, channels, etc., churn, and how much control you have over it, etc. Same with customer acquisition costs. At the beginning, you’re testing a lot, and not everything will work. You get better over time. Some take time to kick in.\n \n
Changes to test might be things like layouts, calls to action, lazy vs. upfront registration, help, chat, button colors, sequencing of flows, how much functionality gets exposed for new users, etc. \n
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You now have real live customers. That means you have quantitative data you can work with to see what works and what doesn’t \nYou want to make small changes fast and a/b test according to your metrics (customer acquisition and retention) \n