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All right, thank you guys for coming. My name is John Athayde, and I'm going to talk today about working better together by mixing Lean UX with Agile Development and User-Centered Design. The last time I was in Chicago for Rails activities was in 2006.
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I come from an architecture background, which gives me a unique perspective. A lot of the ideas I'll present today are drawn from my freelance work over the past 15 years, particularly from my time at companies like Meticulous and LivingSocial, where I headed up internal UI for all our apps.
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Recently, I’ve been working at a startup called CargoSense with Rich Kilmer and Bruce Williams. Additionally, I wrote a book that’s a bit outdated, but it still contains valuable insights. If you’re interested in Rails or Ruby ebooks, there's a 40% discount going on right now.
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Experience matters. Experience encompasses anything you engage with as a user, be it a tool, a book, or whatnot. Looking back at 1983, our experiences of technology were limited, but there’s been a significant evolution since then, making it crucial to understand how we interact with different platforms.
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In our everyday lives, we often run into poorly designed experiences—like when you struggle to find the right angle to see an ATM screen due to glare, or when you encounter doors that mislead you with their handles: some imply pulling but require pushing, necessitating confusing labels to indicate the correct action. Such experiences often require excessive documentation simply because the design was not intuitively clear.
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For example, consider the Iroquois Theater fire in Chicago in 1903, where 600 people lost their lives because the exit doors opened inward, causing a deadly bottleneck. This tragedy illustrates the importance of thoughtful design and user experience.
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When we talk about UX, it’s essential to define it. The term 'user experience' was coined in the early 1980s, initially referring to a mix of vague attributes related to a product's usability. As the field evolved, definitions became more focused on how people interact with those features, moving away from a strict feature-oriented mindset.
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The International Standard Organization (ISO 9241) defines usability as the effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction with which specified users achieve specified goals in particular environments. It's a generally dry definition but an important one.
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Jacob Nielsen has synthesized usability into five core principles, which include how quickly users learn, how efficiently they utilize a product, how easy it is to remember usage, how error-prone the system is, and the level of satisfaction users experience with the product. Each of these principles results from years of accumulated knowledge and experience.
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Returning to the Iroquois Theater fire, it highlights how architectural building codes evolved significantly in the early 1900s as a result of disasters like that. It led to regulations mandating exterior doors to open outward or break away, significantly enhancing safety and user experience.
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Now, let’s delve into design specifically related to software. Various processes and methodologies exist, which I’d like to compare and contrast. The Waterfall model is probably familiar to most of you. It emphasizes large, detailed documentation, originating from projects in traditional engineering where design is finalized before construction.
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In this model, delays in one phase can derail the entire project timeline. Typically, the Waterfall process involves defining the problem, devising a solution, testing it, and deploying the solution, which can take an excessive amount of time—sometimes years. Meanwhile, the business context may have shifted, leading to the potential of delivering a product that no longer meets user needs.
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Despite claims of adopting Agile practices, many organizations still see similar siloed processes, resulting in poor communication between design and development teams. Developers may argue they are agile, but if their processes don't include collaborative iterating, they are retaining the inefficiencies of Waterfall.
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Moving away from the notion of a singular ‘design hero’ who provides solutions, this conversation opens up around Lean UX. Lean UX revolves around collaborative design facilitation rather than exclusive 'designers' leading the process.
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Lean UX incorporates design thinking and Agile methodologies, with influences from the Lean Startup movement. It emphasizes the importance of validating ideas through real-world user interaction instead of merely assuming user needs.
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Design thinking emphasizes direct observation of actual users. It communicates the necessity for designers to engage with real people to discover their requirements, rather than relying solely on assumptions or theoretical constructs.
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Agile manifestos, established in 2001, remain relevant today, providing principles that elevate user involvement throughout the development process. Agile is about continuous feedback and readjusting objectives based on real experiences.
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Returning to Lean UX, the process is iterative and collaborative, where designers, developers, and stakeholders engage together, leading to a cohesive understanding of what users require.
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This brings me to the definition of Lean UX from the Lean UX book, which suggests that the primary goal is to make the true nature of a product accessible and visible to all stakeholders quickly.
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Tools like personas help designers navigate user needs. Effective utilization of personas allows teams to eliminate theoretical constructs and represent actual users with human traits—making design discussions more relatable.
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Additionally, sketching quickly and utilizing diagrams help promote collaborative workflows, where people can discuss concepts without getting bogged down by perfectionism. It's a flexible approach that encourages open dialogue and iterative development.
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When working on projects, you can engage users in the design process early on, testing and sketching out ideas in parallel with coding efforts, thus paving paths for functionality and user-centric designs to emerge.
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To effectively build products, it’s important to harness the information from real users and continually iterate based on their feedback. Engaging stakeholders and gathering insights enable teams to recognize the real challenges users face.
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In this collaborative environment, designers and developers must work side by side right from the inception of ideas to execution. Cross-functional teams should come together to achieve tangible results in user experience.
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Moreover, small wins should be celebrated, making efforts visible, and establishing a positive design culture, embracing the 'let's try things out' attitude. Quick wins encourage ongoing engagement from all team members for more effective solutions.
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Unfortunately, mediation sometimes falls apart, leading to design drift. Design drift occurs when original design principles evolve into more complex arrangements over time without the same clarity.
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Thus, fostering a shared understanding among all teams involved—developers, designers, and product managers—should be a continual effort. Initiatives should align all individuals to keep the entire process on track.
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In conclusion, by adopting Lean UX principles and ensuring collaborative dynamics across teams, organizations can better respond to user needs and create effective, user-friendly products. By fostering a culture of shared success, we can achieve greater outcomes where everyone plays a role in the process.
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So, let's embrace these practices and work together more effectively. Thank you for your time and attention!
