Building a Great Lean UX Team - FlowCon - 30min v3 w. video links

IBM DesignIBM DesignIBM Design

Building a great Lean UX Team

Design Principal and Manager, Watson Group !

Ariadna Font Llitjós, PhD

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Catalonia’s popular tradition: Castells (human tower)

Castellers

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bit.ly/W9w8D0

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Embracing failure

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bit.ly/1lHgTOb

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1. Cross-functional team - Agile

2. User-centric design and development - UX

3. Just-in-time (minimize waste) - Lean

4. Maximize learning - Agile, Lean startup, UX

5. Validate and iterate - Agile, Lean startup, UX

Lean UX Team

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What does it take to build a great Lean UX team?

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1. A leader with a clear and strong Lean UX team vision  

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Great Lean UX team’s secret sauce

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1. A leader with a clear and strong Lean UX team vision

2. T-shaped designers and developers

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Great Lean UX team’s secret sauce

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1. A leader with a clear and strong Lean UX team vision

2. T-shaped designers and developers

3. The right corporate culture and team core values

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Great Lean UX team’s secret sauce

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Form follows function… or does it?

Form = team (organizational) structure

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Function = primary goal, reason of existence

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Form B - Tower

Design Dev QA Doc Design Dev

QA

Doc

Form = team (organizational) structure

Form A - Independent functions (silos)

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Function A - Independent goals Function B - Focus on user delight

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Ou

tco

me

s

Design

Dev

QA

Doc

Design

Dev

QA

Doc

User delight

Function = primary goal, reason of existence

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Real world example

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User delight Release 1

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Real world example

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User delight

User delight Release 1

Release 2

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Outcome follows form (instead of function)

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User delight

User delight Release 1

Release 2

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Lean UX team’s secret ingredient #1

A single leader with a clear vision and understanding of what a Lean UX team is and how it operates

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2

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T-shaped designers and developers who fit in

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T-shape professionals

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BROAD

DE

EP

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BROAD

DE

EP

BROAD

DE

EP

Design

Dev

QA

Doc

Design

Dev

QA

Doc

User delight

What are we emphasizing when we state team’s goal as disjoint vs joint?

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Specialized Skills

• Design • user research

• user experience

• interaction design

• visual design

• Development • front-end

• application

• back-end

• QA • UI and UX tester

• application tester

• backend tester

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Productive skill overlap (great for pairing + directions to grow professionally)

- Design - User research & user experience

- ux & ix

- interaction design & visual design

- Design - Dev - Visual design & front-end dev (esp. CSS, also html, javascript)

- User experience & front-end and application development

- User experience & application and backend development

- Development - front-end & application

- application & back-end

- QA - UI/UX tester & UX/UI designer

- UI/UX tester & visual designer

- Application tester & front-end /application dev

- Backend tester & application/backend dev

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T-shaped designers, developers and testers

that complement each other and fit in

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Lean UX team’s secret ingredient #2

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Culture and Values

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Team Core Values

• Open and honest communication - radical collaboration

• Passion - quality, focus on the user

• Balance - design and code quality vs speed, work-life balance

• Continuous improvement

• Just-in-time (start low-res and iterate; minimize waste)

• Design Thinking - user-centric methods to innovate

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@quicola #leanux #FlowConIBM Design :: IBM Confidential :: ©2013 IBM Corporation

Corporate Strategy

IBM Design Thinking is a framework for delivering great user experiences

to our clients.

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This is not a user experience

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This is a user experience

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IBM Design Thinking = Cross-functional collaboration to innovate

Viability Product

Management

Desirability Design

Feasibility Engineering

Hiring new team members

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Maximum overlap to foster alignment

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Thoughtful diversity to foster both collaboration and creativity

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How can you influence team culture?

• Hiring T-shape developers that complement each other (Lean UX lead & team)

• Training and coaching (Lean UX lead)

• Orchestrating work to allow team members to both shine and learn from each other (Lean UX lead)

• Team building activities (team & Lean UX lead)

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What happens when there isn’t a set of core values shared by the team and/or the right

corporate culture?

When Culture and shared values are lacking…

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3 key ingredients for a Great Lean UX Team

1. A leader with a clear and strong Lean UX team vision

2. Team of T-shaped professionals

3. The right culture and core values

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Feeling after a Release!

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Including our users…

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Thanks!

@quicola

!

#leanux

#designthinking @ibmdesign