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Ask DN: What is your opinion on Lean UX?

almost 9 years ago from Bjarke Daugaard, UX Lead and Corporate Entrepreneur @ Danske Bank MobileLife

  • Adrian HowardAdrian Howard, almost 9 years ago

    Answering the questions:

    Is Lean UX something you've tried and did it work out in practise?

    Yes, and yes.

    Have some of you chosen not to use Lean UX and what was the reason?

    I don't use the approach all of the time, because some clients aren't set up in a way that they can use it effectively. Sometimes it's a culture issue. Sometimes it's a technical one. Usually it's a combination of the two.

    Any other general opinion about the method?

    It's running through the usual hype cycle at the moment. This means there are a lot of common misconceptions about what it's about and how it works. This is going to make your research job harder.

    Meta comment on the research:

    You said:

    My starter hypothesis is, that it is a bit too simple and "business" oriented to actually provide the best foundation for design

    You know how in user interviewing and user research we talk about not assuming the answer or asking leading questions… guess what this is…

    So I'm going to analyze Lean UX using existing academic articles and approaches to Design Thinking, HCI, Interaction Design and Experience Design to try to (maybe) improve on the method.

    Looking at academic articles isn't going to be terribly useful to you as a starting point. Because Lean UX, and many of the precursor practices and methods that led into Lean UX, didn't come from the academic world. They came from the practitioner world. Janice Fraser coined the term in 2010. Jeff & Josh's book popularised it in 2013. There's just not been time for much academic work on the subject. And, to be honest, a bunch of the work that I have seen has been pretty poor.

    If you want to understand how it works, and how people are applying it, you need to be talking to practitioners.

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    • Bjarke DaugaardBjarke Daugaard, almost 9 years ago

      You know how in user interviewing and user research we talk about not assuming the answer or asking leading questions… guess what this is…

      Haha, that was NOT my research question, just the first thought that popped up after reading some articles about the subject :) Should have rephrased that.

      But thank you for your comments. The thing about the area being unexplored academically is correct but there are so much material about Experience Design and HCI and a lot of methodologies to compare it with.

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      • Adrian HowardAdrian Howard, almost 9 years ago

        But thank you for your comments. The thing about the area being unexplored academically is correct but there are so much material about Experience Design and HCI and a lot of methodologies to compare it with.

        But without understanding what you are comparing them with, how do you do it well?

        Having worked in both academia and industry over the years the disconnect between the academic view of how UX is practiced — Lean UX or otherwise — is often pretty extreme.

        A literature review may well be a useful first step, but it's really not going to get you much insight into how and why the lean ux practices evolved, and why they're practiced. For that you're going to have to go talk to practitioners. Both those using "normal" and Lean UX approaches.

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    • Sjors TimmerSjors Timmer, almost 9 years ago

      Which reminds me, there's a very interesting short book based on ethnographic research in an architecture firm: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/9064507147/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=sjortimm-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=9064507147

      I used it as a foundation for a talk I once did: http://notura.com/2012/02/rem-koolhaas-designing-the-design-process/

      1 point