What is LeanUX?

Possibly one of the worst ways to start off any design process is aspirational wireframes.

If you have ever spent 4 weeks creating something you considered to be magnificent only to realize you did it all in a silo and what you were really doing has no real value to your business, creating lost time and design debt…welcome to the party.

When you get into an agile machine — remember, it’s moving.

Did these wireframes get abandoned because they were flawed? Or did you go too far without any validation of this masterpiece you were constructing? Validation, meaning — did anyone even prove that this flow even fit into your current platform? Nope, not on that 4 week solo sprint you were running like a champ!

What are you really building?

What culture are you really building? Are you building trust, reliability, flexibility, communication, open doors? Conversations in the hallways — that inspire?

Or are you simply handing off a guarded design that the next human receiving it won’t even spend the time to ask you questions about it? They will just tear it apart — as well as your team — with their guarded team…oh and then half-ass build it for you. Or worse, just skin it?

LeanUX is based on a book by Eric Ries called “Lean Startup” and it combines UX design — to come together and build a culture of collaboration that tears down all these silos of gated hand-offs and mistrust amongst the humans that are spending 8 hours a day with each other for years on end.

LeanUX: The Reality

Well, first, what does it actually do? It removes all the bullshit.

While also creating inclusion in the design process — amongst the UX designers, UI designers, developers, product managers, quality assurance engineers, marketers, and others who make up the heartbeat of the company. (scary, I know)

Gothelf, Jeff, and Josh Seiden. “Lean UX: Designing Great Products with Agile Teams.” Lean UX: Designing Great Products with Agile Teams, O’Reilly, 2016, pp. xix