Design is not about the pixels — or why the lean approach rocks

For a while now, I focused on building partnerships with my freelance clients.

A couple of pages taken out of lean UX book helped a lot.

263790__wallpaper-lines-creative-stripes-abstract-abstract-walls-lines-green-blue-backgrounds_p

While talking with potential clients, especially coming from Dribbble (I guess that’s due to visual nature of the site), I am sometimes having a hard time explaining how I work. I noticed a lot of people are still used to what I call “old agency model”, where designer puts a price tag on the work based on rough time estimate, then disappears with the project into oblivion and shows up a bit later with a finished project that might or might not fit the client’s vision. This is bad. For a while now I have been working with lessons taken out from Jeff Gothelf’s amazing book Lean UX and I have been really happy about it for several reasons:

You have to get over your ego

As a designer, you might be forced to show things that are not perfect. This is good for you. It’s a lot easier getting feedback from your client — or potential users — early than spending a lot of hours trying to pixel-perfect a solution that wouldn’t work in the first place. Remember that design is all about solving problems and if you’re solving the wrong problems, your pixel-perfect buttons don’t matter.

It breeds trust

If you’re working with people in your team — product owners, project managers, developers and so on — side by side, people start to understand that only last couple of percent of the design process is about the pixels. Majority of design happens in the designer’s head or sketches and a lot of things are not deliverables that you can show off to your client or colleagues. Working in the open is useful to you and the team or the client, because everyone knows what’s going on and understands the process.

It’s more focused

There’s an important saying in the lean startup community — shipped is better than perfect. If you can get your design out to potential users even with its flaws and problems, there’s higher chance that you will get useful feedback and act on it without going down the wrong route. There’s also usually less deliverables and a whole lot more of tweaking and fixing things. One major upside is also the fact that usually you don’t spend a lot of time building the wrong thing.

There are obviously downsides to this approach and you as a designer have to make sure you overcome this. The major obstacles I found so far are:

It gets micromanage-y

When working in the open you have to be prepared that a lot of people who are not designers will step in and try to get a say. This is good, but can be destructive to the project if you simply cave in and do whatever people tell you. Micromanagement never helped anyone and certainly won’t help your project if you allow it to happen. If you have to “fight” for your design, do it. Make sure you have data, examples and anything that can help you stand your ground but make sure to stay open for useful feedback. This is hard, so brace yourself and do your research.

It gets messy

A lot of people are not used to this process so when you show them somewhat imperfect mockup or prototype, they will go straight into criticising things that don’t look right. Stop them right there and make sure you’re talking about the same thing — if you were just trying to get one interaction right, make sure you’re on the same page with your team or your client. Make sure that you’re talking about what matters instead of dwelling on the details — there will be time for that.

It’s hard to estimate

While staying true to the iterative nature of design process, lean UX is incredibly hard to estimate, which can be tricky. The lean approach works incredibly well with product teams but the client needs to be updated with ongoing costs and time. The process is all about being open and trusting each other so make sure you communicate clearly how much things are taking and signal potential problems as soon as they appear — this helps avoiding going way over budget or spending lots of time working around some particular problem when there’s lots more other things to do.

I found it best to work with the lean startup “Minimum Viable Product” (or “Minimum Viable Experience”) and then take it from there if you’re working on a constrained budget.

All in all, I love working lean and I found it very liberating. I strongly recommend you to try it as well — while it’s hard at the beginning, it’s really worth it.


原创文章,作者:Smiler李想,如若转载,请注明出处:https://www.iamue.com/5942/

(0)
Smiler李想Smiler李想
上一篇 2015-06-01
下一篇 2015-06-02

相关推荐

  • 设计案例|在做方案时,“更明显点”这句话怎么破

    在做方案的时候,时常会听到这样的话,“这个地方应该更明显一点”。今天,阁主将拿出自己设计的一个徽章注释来进行说明。

    2017-04-29
  • 平面设计中,有哪些简单好用的排版技巧和方法?

    当两张图片中应用的构成元素都相同,画布尺寸也相同的情况下,排版的好坏就决定你整张图片的质量了,这就好比两个厨师,同样的食材做同一道菜,味道却可能截然不同。

    2017-05-19
  • [译]UX设计之复选框和开关按钮

    当设计表单时,交互设计师常常不得不面对一个问题,就是要选择出一个合适的界面元素好标示出从多个选项中做出特定选择这种交互。当然,我们都有可能遵循某种既定的规则。无论如何,在做出这个选择时我们都应该牢记…

    2016-06-30
  • 同样是券商,为什么你家APP用户体验不好?原来还有这一招...

    券业新力量 | 服务所有券业人的梦想当前浏览器不支持播放音乐或语音,请在微信或其他浏览器中播放As Long As You Love MeBackstreet Boys - Backstreet's Back导言洞察用户喜好,吸引用户,留住用户,让用户满意,是所有服务业的本质。本文以行为数据切入,从三大方面、两个案例,全方位解析如何利用行为数据提升证券App用户体验。用户体验(User Experience)最早被广泛认知和提及,是在上...

    2018-03-30
  • 译文|一个好故事在用户体验设计中的力量

    “细心的观众/听众会很有可能会与这个故事中的人物的情感产生共鸣,并在故事结束后模仿这些人物的感情和行为。这也就解释了为什么你看了詹姆斯邦德拯救世界之后而产生的支配感觉,看了斯巴达300勇士之后就有了外出工作打算。”
    ——保罗J.扎克,经济学家“故事是激活部分大脑的唯一的方式,使听者把经验变成他们自己的东西
    一个单一的故事可以让我们的整个大脑工作。比较这个层级的参与,只阅读要点或无关的文本只能让我们大脑的某些区域工作。然后我们很快就忘记了这些信息,因为对于这些信息来说,我们没能联系到我们自己的经验,也没有积累任何情绪的连接”“精心设计的东西也不足以单独取得成功。整个生态系统及其相关交互点也必须如同产品本身一般被设计过,这也是可持续设计的要求”
    ——罗伯特布鲁纳,Ammunition Group创始人“许多商家其实已经发现在实际意义上讲故事的力量,他们已经观察到了一个精心构造的叙事是可以多么的令人信服。并且最近的科学研究也很好的阐释故事是如何在某些方面影响我们的态度、信念和行为。”

    2017-05-29
  • UX小白 | 不谈它?算什么用户体验设计?

    这其实只是个引你进来的标题,我今天真正想说的事情其实是它——你在做一款产品的时候考虑过它的无障碍性(Accessibility)吗?无障碍性(Accessibility):在图形交互界面为基础的交互方式中,无障碍性也往往被称为可访问性。“无障碍性(accessibility)意味着产品设计应用时应考虑到,无论是因为年龄、事故或疾病而有认知、感官或者移动障碍的人,还是没有此类障碍的人,都应能够有效使用这个设计。”——《About Face...

    2018-01-31
  • 『小米只卖产品 不卖节操』雷布斯站在巨人的肩膀上做了什么?

    文章来自设计癖 2014 年 12 月 9 日,小米又一次涉嫌抄袭。这一次的对象,是日本巴慕达公司的 AirEngine 安之风空气净化器。同样的专利许可授权纠纷,同样深表遗憾的回应。巴慕达与曾经的魅族、年初的 Pressy 以及…

    2014-12-27
  • 气定神闲的珍珠

    快快点击关注人言风华绝代太难得,然而,一个人终日沉浸在王者农药里碌碌无为,几时能被时光打磨成气定神闲的珍珠?但,珍珠是天然的馈赠,美,则是一种修炼。这世界上的一切精致动人,都是狠狠的被修理出来的。软了不行,硬了也不行,得软硬兼施。就像选专业一样。就像选择计算机软件技术专业一样。你想让自己活得精致,过得洒脱,不对自己狠一点,社会对你狠一点。自己的狠,是由内而外的质变。社会的狠,是苟且偷生。自己的狠,是内软外硬,由环境的硬塑造内心你的软,打...

    2018-03-15
  • 全新的交互体验 | 三星Bixby中文版首发体验视频

    在三星盖乐世 S8 | S8+发布之时,三星还发布了全新语音助手“Bixby”,但中文适配需要时间所以让国内的星粉久等了!为了可以让国内小伙伴快速上手,饼饼特地做了 Bixby中文版体验视频,快速了解 Bixby来这里看就对了!三星Bixby不同于一般的语音助手,在满足一般功能操作的同时还可以进行更深度操作,比如发微博、微信发红包、打开相机自动拍照以及导航等;有关更多Bixby的深度功能,我们期待与大家共同挖掘!点击下方“阅读原文”,了...

    2018-01-30
  • 有奖励的互动提高用户参与性

    奖励点燃我们的动力。奖励让我们知道我们正在做正确的事情,并使我们继续探索学习新东西或者实现一个目标。 用户收到的一个不经意的变量奖励会更有效,因为人类渴望可预测性。 我们到处寻找规律,试图理解这个世界。 …

    2015-01-12