Balance between user experience design and lean Design

What's more important to you: is it to create products with a killer user experience to attract users? Or is it possible to create products that can satisfy users and seize a large market share as soon as possible?

If the user experience of a product is poor, the user will not use it, but if it is a market pioneer, the user will be willing to try it out and give feedback to help improve it. People have been trying to balance the confrontation between experience and time. Therefore, we believe that we should use a better framework to think about this problem: experience design or lean design should depend on the company (or product) the stage. Of course, this is only a framework, and everything still needs to be combined with your own actual situation. If you think that you can successfully bring the product to the market by referring to this article completely, it is a pity that this is not possible.

Which has a higher priority: Experience and execution?

Experience

Good products share some common features: Excellent user experience. Good products not only meet people's needs, but also bring additional surprises to them. They give users the clearest navigation and the most concise process, and users can use them easily and intuitively.

Of course, these are all theoretical. In fact, there are few products that can achieve this perfection. We often discuss the product UI, priority features, processes and navigation, frameworks, prototypes, and so on. User Experience is how users use products, how users perceive products, and how users view products. The definition of user experience is so broad that it is a basic framework.

Run

The other design method is called lean design, that is, the so-called minimum viable product (MVP ). A core idea of lean design is to launch products that can basically meet the requirements of functions, quickly seize the market, and quickly iterate through user feedback.

Many lean design supporters believe that this method can truly get feedback from users, so as to truly meet user needs. They generally think that before you have no real users, you cannot understand the real needs of users. Obtain basic knowledge and communicate with each other as required, and then seek real user needs through real user behavior. Through some small tests, you cannot really grasp the user's needs. You just want to control your users. Most users always like to try new products and give up the current trend.

Now let's go back to the product itself. Any product should consider the following three questions:

Commercial

Although there are many successful examples of lean design, for example, Dropbox has become a product with a valuation of 1 billion in four years. However, lean design often implies the minimum commercial (MVB), which may lead to slow growth in revenue and traffic. Of course, product value often requires a long period of accumulation. In fact, the commercial value of a product is very rare for rocket-type growth. But whether it is slow growth or rocket-like growth, the real important thing is: can this product be profitable.

Implementation

Commercialization is only part of the product. Next we need to assess whether our resources, funds, and technologies can support the implementation of this product. However, many people often ignore this problem, but the product cannot continue to develop without actually solving this problem.

Demand

Finally, the product must meet the user's needs so that the product can have the minimum value (MDP ).

Mongoron Walter (author of Emotional Design) believes that even in lean design, user experience is also the key to demand: "In the beginning, the focus of products is on ease of learn and ease of use, however, after a while, when a large number of products appear in the market, what will make your products stand out? The answer is personalization, and feature features can be added later, but your product must have a unique personality first.

The following are some suggestions on how to deal with lean design and user experience in each stage of the product. The product stage determines the weight of user experience or lean design.

The design depends on the path, that is, the preliminary sketch may limit future development, unless you can give up everything and start again. However, this approach is often not desirable. More likely, you will choose to integrate new content into the original design. Therefore, reducing the uncertainty of a product as soon as possible helps to create a successful product.

This means that it is a suitable strategy to spend limited resources to focus on solving a real demand. Simple design, reasonable functions, and correct development direction. The core work of the next stage is to optimize functions and improve user experience. Laura Klein believes that MVP (minimum viable product) is not an excuse for poor products. MVPs should be able to learn and optimize constantly, but from a bad product, except that people do not like bad products, you will not learn anything else.

Generally, the product has three major market stages:

Technical stage-a little User Experience + a lot of lean Design

Objective: To set up a team and understand market requirements

Key factor: Focus on the minimum available products, focusing on the feasibility of the products (including commercial and technical ). You cannot focus on user experience because you do not have any users. You know who can use it, but you don't know who will use it. Draw a product prototype as much as possible and draw out from the prototype who needs it, who uses it, and how to use it.

Success Criteria: users outside the test group want to use it

Function stage-Limited User Experience + Less lean Design

Objective: To solve the most important functional problems based on existing or expected user needs

Key factor: Starting from the user's decision-making and emotions, you want users to have confidence in your products? Or do you want them to be curious? At the same time, pay close attention to the updated functions of competitors. Do not expect to get anything before the product provides the correct functions and experience.

Success Criteria: users can express their experiences and feelings about the product.

Experience stage-optimize user experience as much as possible + do not adopt lean Design

Objective: To study what users are doing when using products

Key factor: do not add unnecessary features, find out the real pain points of users, and think about how to retain customers. Study user experience design from around the world and apply this knowledge. Strive to create a product that truly conforms to the user experience design.

Success Criteria: reputation and viral marketing among users

User experience design vs lean Design

In fact, these two design methods are not completely opposite. Their core is the same: user-centered design. The sooner you meet your needs, the better the product will be. Users don't care how you build a product or how much you pay. They need a good product. The following describes two methods by simulating and designing a new application.

User experience design:

1. Identify users, problems, and projects: people need an application that turns a week's recipes into a shopping list.

2. Analyze users and competitors: Build a map of user roles and experience, and analyze competing products to find out the market and user pain points of the shopping app,

3. Design: based on the previous materials, make a sketch, line chart, and low-fidelity original model, and then continuously improve the user experience, and finally create a high-fidelity prototype.

4. Search for users: Find the core audience and perform tests. This is often an underestimating step, which may lead to product failure. Theoretically, such tests should be conducted at each stage.

Lean Design

1. Observation and Brainstorming: Observe the relationship between the user's shopping content and their dishes, and focus on the areas that can change the shopping experience.

2. Minimal viable product: Obtain feedback from test users and design an application that converts menus to shopping lists.

3. Collect feedback and iterations: Maybe the shopping list is not really a pain point for users. What users need is a simple and convenient way to find the right recipe. Find key user needs and start from here.

Lean user experience is an attempt to integrate the two methods.

The first key point is that we want to take the user experience as the goal at all stages of the product, or even when launching the product as soon as possible. In this way, with the establishment of the importance of user experience, the design will become more and more humane.

The second key point is to collect more feedback from users. Of course, this does not mean to please all users. Time, capital, team management, and users are all important considerations.

Balance between user experience design and lean Design