Jeff Gothelf: The Champion of Lean UX

Jeff Gothelf knows better than anyone the importance of validating product ideas and concepts early in the design process to ensure you’re on the right track. He also knows the value of using rapid prototyping techniques and how to focus your efforts on achieving a business outcome rather than building features. If you agree with these ideas and want  to learn how to escape product requirement hell using Lean UX, read on.

In the below post, you’ll find some great free articles and podcasts around Lean UX and Agile. But you can really dive in deep at this year’s User Interface 18 Conference in Boston, October 21-23, 2013. In Jeff Gothelf’s workshop Escaping Product Requirement Hell Using Lean UX, You’ll learn to prioritize an endless backlog of ideas and features by talking about business outcomes earlier in your process — collaboratively — with your entire team. You will also get to see why you don’t have to build an entire product to understand if the idea has real value.

Here’s some reading about Lean UX

Why Lean UX? – Jeff Gothelf
Jeff Gothelf lays out the rationale for why Lean UX is something new and why it’s important now

Is There Any Meat on This Lean UX Thing?– Jared M. Spool
Jared sets out to learn what Lean UX was all about. He talked to dozens of folks in all areas of the UX field and dug into what people mean when they talk about it.

Designing with Remote Teams – Jeff Gothelf

Jeff explains how to make designing work with remote teams. While the benefits of in-person collaboration and communication are clear, it doesn’t mean they can’t be achieved with remote colleagues.

Cost Effective Approaches to Iteration in Agile UX – Jared M. Spool
Jared delves into some ideas on how to make agile UX cost-effective.

Agile Development Processes: An Interview with Jeff Patton – By Jared M. Spool and Joshua Porter
In this interview Jeff Patton suggests that agile processes lead to happier people and reduced cycle times. He also posits that development teams engaged in Agile approaches generally work more collaboratively and see the software they are designing and building delivered at a higher frequency.
 

Here’s a taste of what Jeff and others have been saying about Lean UX

Jeff Gothelf – Lean UX: Escaping Product Requirement Hell
Starting with an attitude that you’re testing a hypothesis which leads to a more open discussion. The main thing is, hypotheses, just like design, can change. Being flexible and iterative in your design process encourages an environment of collaboration.

Jeff Gothelf – Lean UX: Integrating Design into Agile
Using the Lean UX process, you’re constantly validating your designs, especially early in the process. This motivates the team to work towards the same end goal.

Jeff Gothelf –  Understanding Lean UX
The term Lean UX is bandied about quite a bit these days. Along with it, there seems to be some confusion as to whether this is just a buzzword, a new way of working, or simply a new description for what people in the user experience realm already do. Jeff Gothelf of The Ladders is a champion of Lean UX, so Jared Spool sat down with him to find out what Lean UX was all about.

Anders Ramsay – Designing with Agile
Anders says that you have to step back from specific Agile methods, such as Scrum and XP, and really look at the underlying ideas.

Jeff Patton – Story Mapping for UX Practitioners: Tying Agile and UX Together
Jeff talks about how story mapping is a way to build a model of user experiences. More than that, in the Agile context, it allows you to tactically plan for what should go into each release. It is a way to get everyone on the team thinking and talking about user experience.

Special Price for the UI18 Conference

By the way, if you decide to join us for UI18 in Boston, October 21-23, 2013, use the promotion code BLOGand get $200 off the full conference registration.