Much has been made
of Lean UX. Recently built on utopian
bubblegum pop dribble, Lean UX arguably came from the 1930s Bell Labs' Walter Shewhart
"plan-do-study-act" (PDSA) phenomenon, and was later known as
iterative incremental development, AGILE, and so on. It has been a boon for recent
conferences, seminars, workshops, and books all heralding Lean UX. No doubt you
will often see and hear about it in job descriptions and on HR checklists when
seeking out a gig as a UX practitioner.
This all invokes remnants of Magnolia's
Frank T.J. Mackey, played by Tom Cruise, a rock star that people look to in an
attempt to learn how to make a few bucks in today’s hot experience design job
market—it’s all about surface, without any deep design sustainability. Lean was this UX generation's 1.0. I'm here to tell you it's time to evolve to
Muscle UX.
The merits and
roots of lean are very much still applicable in Muscle UX. I'll admit, I'm jumping on the
"brand-my-style-of-UX" bandwagon, and I'll happily confess that once
my book by the same name is available I, too, will look to speak on it—cashing
in as much as others have on their "how-to" books. However, I'll also go as far as to say that
Muscle UX is complementary to being lean.
It's a stage, a chapter, a movement, a phase.
For a start-up,
lean will most likely move things along, which always emboldens teams and
investors alike. However, we must start
the discussion around UX to no longer view it as a phase within a project, or
even as a discipline that starts and acts around development and
analytics. User experience exists
because users react to narrative; it is during their experience with your
product when they will decide whether they will engage it again. True, some experiences, like stopping at a
red STOP sign are easily intuitive, but some are also learned, like pushing
down on a prescription bottle to open its top.
Where to put the stop sign is not so
intuitive, analytical information about traffic patterns, number of accidents,
increased populations, and whether it's a rural or urban road all play a factor
into the decision. Just as well, a
concerned letter from a citizen might inspire a decision too. Similarly, a conversation with residents or
business owners may inspire action to look at the data. These are not mutually exclusive, yet they
are all antecedents of where the sign goes.
Lean UX would lead us to just guess where to put stop signs and see how
it affects traffic, never knowing that it may make commutes unnecessarily
longer for drivers. A lean UXer may just wait for a complaint letter to come in
before responding.
Muscle UX is lean
UX reformed. To play on the word
"lean," the method not only trims the fat in taking out over-produced
documentation, for example, wires of every screen and action, but it also leans on everyone involved on a project,
leans on everyone showing up on time
and every day, leans on everyone
knowing each other's shorthand. Lean
supposes your UX lead will not be recruited away, hit by a car, or call in sick
for a week. Lean leans on the same developers to come in every day and know your
shorthand. Lean feels great when you're
working with a developer in real-time, changing a call-to-action from blue to
red. But like having a night of shots
and laughs with friends, there's a hangover lurking. Lean UX is results driven,
but also reactive, not proactive.
Content strategy
seems lost in lean UX when it comes to metadata and the future of users seeking
out the same content across several devices, known or unknown.
The principle of
the muscle method is to put forth "study and experience" prior to
planning. When planning, chart a course
with possible variants in user behavior and technological advances, and along
the way tracking with learned knowledge using total immersion in the field with
iterative launches of a product.
Here are some
guidelines to creating a Muscle UX environment:
1) All decisions are made with empathy—empathy
for the stakeholder, for the user, for developers, for everyone on the team,
for anyone targeted to use the product (and for those who are not). A focus group, a lab with a couch and a
one-way mirror, will not share with you as much as actually living in someone's
shoes. Observational, controlled
research can be used to verify theories observed in uncontrolled environments;
however, there's nothing like taking your tablet to a café and asking someone
to use a competitor's app while thinking aloud.
By the same token, empathize with the stakeholders, interview them
organically to see what is really pulling certain decisions and create a rapport
for future buy-in. We as users who EXPERIENCE
practitioners have no place in the discipline if we do not EXPERIENCE the world
ourselves.
2) Match narrative with data—analytics
must be a part of the decision making process.
Evidence will convince stakeholders to act. If evidence is needed for a new product, use
academic research from your alma mater, which often has deep access to JSTOR,
ProQuest, ScienceDirect, Lexis, etc. where Google Scholar may not. Think of evidence as only part of the user
story. Like a lawyer presenting a case before a jury, a UX practitioner uses
evidence to build narrative, setting up an order of events that is easily
followed. This is key to how your team
will collect more data as well. Yes,
users will use products in ways not originally thought of by the stakeholders,
but your metadata strategy will report that narrative back iteratively while
the product is in the market.
3) Report on observations, adopt early to
trending apps to study behavior, and post ideas 24/7, using the cloud and tagging
everything—Forget the wiki. Use
cloud services like Flowdock, Evernote, and/or Dropbox to record
decisions. Take photos of whiteboard
sessions, of users out in the field, take screenshots of the competition's
product, or of a sketch on a napkin with your phone and post them, hashtagging
the hell out of it. Easily searchable
ideas, conversations, and files with a versioning in the name will keep team momentum
and urgency. Even for yourself, if you capture an idea, you can recall it later
in a working session with stakeholders anywhere in the world.
4) Content and data will outlive any device
currently in market, plan your content strategy around ever-evolving user
journeys—If you were in a car listening to this article, you wouldn't have
been able to hear the parts marked in bold.
Content strategy works best when it is adaptive to a user's journey
enough that it is independent to the device. Planning experiences anthropologically will
help for sustainability of the content.
Therefore, it is up to the Muscle UX practitioner to design with
metadata in mind.
5) Know when and how to document for a global audience—This
comes with just as much empathy as your planning phase, but it is a crucial
element in communicating with a global community of stakeholders; even if
everyone is in the same building, we live in a very diverse world. This is why we wireframe, yet measure how much
to document based on the fact that anyone from anywhere may enter the project
at any time.
6) Make allies across the organization, but
don't be afraid to be the lone champion—While working in lean environments, I noticed decisions were
often implemented quickly before any leadership or certain stakeholders noticed,
or decisions were frozen in stasis while waiting for others to review or
buy-in. Whether in a start-up, in a
large organization, or a multinational advertising agency, building rapport and
learning which decision makers are immediately needed will assist your ability
to implement UX best practices over the lifecycle of a product. It will also assist you when you must lead
and advocate for a decision to be made.
7) Always be reflective while considering experiential
expansion—E.M. Forster once said, "Expansion, that is the idea the
novelist must cling to, not completion, not rounding off, but opening
out." See your product's launch as
writing the first chapter in a great novel; it will be about the transaction
between your product and your user throughout the ongoing process of
creating. Yet, the added benefit you
have that an author does not, is that you gain knowledge through these
transactions along each chapter.
8) Fail often—Celebrate the wins, but
cherish the failures. Failure is the
kale and bee pollen to Muscle UX; it is super food. This isn't just about product, but it's about
speaking up or projecting an idea on the wall just to get more insight to where
stakeholder's minds are when the room's too quiet. Do not lament failure, but prepare your
stakeholders for possible disappointment on unproven theories. Like in a gym, doing repetitions until your
muscles give in makes you stronger. (Following the previous tenets will make
any failure a win.)
In
Muscle UX, I am proposing that we extrapolate the lean process and grow by
flexing our minds, building from our own experiences, and molding into
sustainable experience design. I have
yet to see the lean method be strong enough on a global scale, when your
developers or stakeholders are in several different time zones, cultures, and
holiday schedules. Similarly, and
perhaps too soon to tell, I've yet to see lean UX be sustainable without having
to completely redesign a product "from the ground up." Meaning, in the end, going lean may cost you
valuable resources and the one thing we all try to maintain: our users' trust.
Denis Griffith (@griffopolis) recently led global
UX initiatives for Emirates Airline, launching iteratively this year, while XCD/head
of UX at Atmosphere Proximity. Denis also
served as director of UX with Havas Life, helping to create one of the first
presentation builder and sales aid iPad apps. He is currently working on a book
about Muscle UX due out in spring 2014.
