Table Of Content

http://avaxho.me/blogs/ChrisRedfield Praise for UX for Lean Startups “A must read to find Product Market fit.” Andy Rachleff—President and CEO, Wealthfront; Cofounder, Benchmark Capital “Laura is an expert at teaching entrepreneurs how to understand their users and design innovative products. This book should be required reading for anybody with a startup.” Brett Durrett—CEO, IMVU “Building great products starts with deep customer understanding, which is surprisingly hard to attain. In this book, Laura walks you through the nuts and bolts of learning from customers and shows you how to turn this learning into an amazing product.” Ash Maurya—Founder, USERcycle “Making products that people buy, use, and love is a whole lot easier if you know Laura Klein’s brilliant, no-nonsense Lean UX tools and tricks. She is an expert practitioner with a wealth of knowledge accumulated from years of working in Lean Startups and evolving the art of Lean UX. This book is an invaluable contribution to our field.” Joshua Kerievsky—CEO, Industrial Logic, Inc. “I expect you to put this book down a lot. Not because it’s bad; quite the contrary—it’s funny, readable, and dare I say charming. It’s just that there are so many good ideas and five-minute epiphanies within its covers, you won’t be able to resist constantly firing off an email or picking up a pen and trying stuff out as you read it.” Alistair Croll—Founder, Solve For Interesting UX for Lean Startups Faster, Smarter User Experience Research and Design Laura Klein Beijing · Cambridge · Farnham · Köln · Sebastopol · Tokyo UX for Lean Startups by Laura Klein Copyright © 2013 Laura Klein. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Published by O’Reilly Media, Inc., 1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472. O’Reilly books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. Online editions are also available for most titles (safari.oreilly.com). For more information, contact our corporate/institutional sales department: (800) 998-9938 or [email protected]. Editor: Mary Treseler Cover Designer: Mark Paglietti Production Editor: Kara Ebrahim Interior Designers: Ron Bilodeau and Copyeditor: Kiel Van Horn Monica Kamsvaag Proofreader: Julie Van Keuren Illustrator: Kara Ebrahim Indexer: Angela Howard Compositor: Holly Bauer May 2013: First Edition. Revision History for the First Edition: 2013-04-24 First release See http://oreilly.com/catalog/errata.csp?isbn=0636920026242 for release details. Nutshell Handbook, the Nutshell Handbook logo, and the O’Reilly logo are registered trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc. UX for Lean Startups and related trade dress are trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc. Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and O’Reilly Media, Inc., was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed in caps or initial caps. Although the publisher and author have used reasonable care in preparing this book, the information it contains is distributed “as is” and without warranties of any kind. This book is not intended as legal or financial advice, and not all of the recommen- dations may be suitable for your situation. Professional legal and financial advisors should be consulted, as needed. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for any costs, expenses, or damages resulting from use of or reliance on the information contained in this book. ISBN: 978-1-449-33491-8 [CW] Contents Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv PaRt OnE: VaLIDatIOn Chapter 1 Early Validation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Chapter 2 the Right Sort of Research at the Right time . . . . . . . . . 21 Chapter 3 Faster User Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Chapter 4 Qualitative Research Is Great . . .Except When It’s terrible . . 51 PaRt tWO: DESIGn Chapter 5 Designing for Validation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Chapter 6 Just Enough Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 Chapter 7 Design Hacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Chapter 8 Diagrams, Sketches, Wireframes, and Prototypes . . . . . 113 v Chapter 9 an MVP Is Both M & V . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Chapter 10 the Right amount of Visual Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 PaRt tHREE: PRODUCt Chapter 11 Measure It! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 Chapter 12 Go Faster! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 Chapter 13 the Big Finish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 vi Foreword This book will make you a better designer. If you’re already a designer, that probably sounds pretty good. But I believe this is true for just about anyone, from engineers to MBAs. I have had the privilege of working with Laura Klein for many years. She is a fantastic designer and has worked on many outstanding products. (Don’t tell her I said this, but she’s also a pretty good programmer, too.) But her talents as an individual contributor are surpassed by her ability to impact whole teams. And I am pleased to report that this extremely rare skill has now been translated into book form. Laura has a special talent for helping nondesigners access the arcane tool- kit that is sometimes called interaction design, usability testing, user experience (UX) design, or—as is my preference—making things that work. Whatever you call it, every modern company must realize that good design drives growth, customer satisfaction, and continuous innovation. This book will put those tools immediately in your hands, no matter what it says on your business card. Startups require good design, but they can’t always afford a full-time designer. In fact, many of the most famous startups had nobody on staff trained in traditional design. Unfortunately, the kind of rapid, cross- functional collaboration that startups require is often at odds with the traditional approaches most designers grew up with. So in order to take advantage of the strengths of the design discipline, we need new approaches that support speed, collaboration, and experimentation. vii If you’re reading this, chances are you work in a startup or hope to become an entrepreneur someday. But one of the most important things we in the Lean Startup movement have been evangelizing is that anyone who is trying to create something new under conditions of high uncertainty is an entrepreneur—no matter what their job description. If you find yourself becoming an “involuntary entrepreneur”—for example, someone inside an established company who faces high uncertainty all of the sudden—you will find these tools especially useful. If you’re looking for a book of abstract theory, aesthetic jargon, or gentle clichés, look elsewhere. This is simply the most practical design book, ever. It pulls no punches and accepts no excuses. Complicated concepts like the Minimum Viable Product are made accessible: it’s a cupcake, not a half- baked bowl of ingredients (see pages 138–139). And every chapter is loaded with step-by-step instructions for how to make each concept come to life. But by far my favorite part of this book is that every tip, every concept, every tool, every approach is placed in its proper context. It is extremely rare to see any expert—let alone a designer—explicitly tell you when not to use their “best practices.” But in real life, there is no such thing as a best practice. Every practice is contextual. Used in the wrong situation, every tool can become extremely harmful. Every tool and recommendation in this book (except one, which I leave as an exercise to the reader to find) comes with an explanation of when to skip it; most are helpfully labeled with their own “When is it Safe to Skip This?” headings. Laura and I worked together long before I wrote the book The Lean Start- up: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. I still cringe when reading some of the highly entertaining stories Laura tells of failed products and bad decisions; many of those mistakes were made by me. Let my dumb mistakes be your gain: listen to Laura Klein and do what she says. Become a better designer. Build great products. Make your customers’ lives better. Good luck. Eric Ries San Francisco, CA April 15, 2013 viii Foreword