Joining me for episode #199 is Jeff Gothelf (@jboogie), talking about “Lean UX” or “Lean User Experience,” a key method for software development, usually used in conjunction with design thinking, agile development, and Lean Startup business practices. Jeff is author of the book Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience and he is Managing Director at Neo, the global product innovation company.
Jeff is teaching a workshop in Austin on June 10 called “Lean UX Bootcamp: Agility through cross-functional collaboration.”
I barely know anything about LeanUX, but have chatted with Jeff before and read the first few chapters of his book… but my role here is to just ask questions…
Jeff will explain Lean UX to us today. I'm taken by the parallels between Lean UX (along with Lean Startup) and more general “Lean,” as I know it in manufacturing and healthcare. It's about deeply understand the customer and their needs, forming hypotheses, and iterating in an experimental and data-driven way… a departure from the old way of the designer “knowing” what the customer wants or a software company writing a huge specification document (about “half of which never got used,” says Jeff).
Lean UX designers are problem solvers, they “get out of the building,” and they get their designs (or even just sketches) in front of customers to get feedback early and often. It's better to do small, inexpensive tests of change… if you're going to fail, better to fail early and fail often… and we'll be more successful as a result. That's good solid Lean thinking and Kaizen thinking. Read more about Jeff via:
For a link to this episode, refer people to www.leanblog.org/199.
For earlier episodes of my podcast, visit the main Podcast page, which includes information on how to subscribe via RSS or via Apple Podcasts.
Here is a video with a longer lecture by Jeff:
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As always, great podcast Mark.
Thanks for the introduction to Lean UX. I saw several similarities with Matthew May’s Lean Learning Loops. I’m looking forward to learning more.
Thanks, Michael.
I’m fortunate to have great guests who have really interesting things to say!