3 Ways to Learn about Lean UX at Big Design 2013

Lean UX is deeply collaborative approach to working on your projects. In Lean UX, you strip away some of the traditional deliverables of other software methods. Instead, you opt for daily, continuous communication with your team. You no longer work in silos, but each person has a unique role with focused bursts of activity–create, build, learn.

At the Big Design Conference 2013, you have three great ways to learn about Lean UX from some of the best thinkers on this subject. I hope you take advantage of these opportunities.

Let’s see what’s happening.

October 17: Lean UX Workshop with Eric Reiss

In this pre-conference workshop, Eric Reiss (CEO of FatDUX) walks you through many of the concepts from his book called Usable Usability, which is where Leans UX starts (with insights and learning). Eric is very passionate about this subject.

This workshop will be highly entertaining and insightful. Plus, it is selling like crazy. It will sell out. Here are three things you will learn in this workshop: Ease of Use, Elegance & Clarity, and Empathy.

Ease of Use

Ease of use – the product does what I want it to do. This deals with physical properties.
Hence, the interactive elements should be:

Functional (the buttons work, the speed is acceptable)
Responsive (the app reacts to your input or provides cognitive feedback)
Ergonomic (Fitt’s Law, keyboard shortcuts, field tabbing, etc.)
Convenient (content and objects are there where you need them)
Foolproof (less risk of error through RAF – Remind, Alert, Force)

Elegance and Clarity

Elegance and clarity – the product does what I expect it to do. This deals with psychological properties. Hence, interactive elements should be:

Visible (controls that can’t be seen don’t exist. Cut down the visual noise. Think feng shui)
Understandable (clear and concise, no unexplained icons,do colors and groupings make sense)
Logical (don’t make me think, build sensible flows)
Consistent (always the same name for the same function, no reuse of icons for different functions)
Predictable (functions and navigation always in same place, elements don’t suddenly change behavior)

Empathy

Empathy – understanding and addressing the needs of the users. After all, you can’t practice user-centered or user-driven design if you don’t care about these folks.

18 Anti-Patterns That Stifle Lean UX Teams

Bill Scott scares me with his smarts!

A brief glimpse of his resume might scare you, too. Let’s just pick these three things: 1) Former Curator of the Yahoo! Design Pattern Library, 2) Former UI Director at Netflix, and 3) Co-Author of Designing Web Interfaces with Theresa Neil. I did not mention that Bill works at PayPal, now.

As I said before, Bill is scary smart. And, he is one of the nicest people in the world.

For the past few years, Bill has focused on transforming PayPal’s culture by adopting Lean UX principles into their software engineering practice. Here is how Bill describes his own talk called “18 Anti-Pattern That Stifle Lean UX Teams”:

What happens when you take teams that have traditionally not worked together closely? Teams that are used to the “delivery mindset” and instead try to bring great experiences to life in a collaborative manner?

All hell breaks loose!

We are all creatures of habit and we all bring baggage to the table. And events conspire to tear our teams apart. This talk takes the flip side of how teams work together well and instead looks at behaviors and events that can stifle team collaboration for Lean UX teams. 18 anti-patterns are used to sensitize you for what to watch out for as well as strategies to overcome each.

You will not want to miss this talk. It is one the talks that made me cry when I first saw it.

Jeff Gothelf Wrote the Book of Lean UX

Image representing Jeff Gothelf as depicted in... Last (but not least), we have Jeff Gothelf speaking at the Big Design Conference 2013. Jeff Gothelf literally wrote the book on Lean UX earlier this year. I highly recommend that you purchase and read his book called Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience. It will make you re-think how you have been working.

Earlier this year, I attended the IA Summit, where I got to see Jeff talk on ways to effectively collaborate with your distributed team members. In this talk, Jeff mentioned the concept of “virtual coffee breaks or beers” with people working in different locations. When I got back to work, I immediately had a “virtual coffee break” with Anita Cator, a friend and co-worker that had recently moved to a different city. His idea of a”virtual coffee break” immediately changed bow I work.

Jeff, of course, will be talking on Lean UX, distributed teams, and collaboration at the conference. For any designer, student, or attendee, Jeff’s talk is a “must-see” at the conference.