What is Lean UX? Foundation of Lean UX and its 15 principles

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Bootcamp

4 min readOct 1, 2021

Many people asked me about UX, Lean UX, and software development. How the software is designed? When and what tools or methodology are used for the design and so on.

Through this article, I will brief on revolutionary UX design methodology called Lean UX, the Foundation of Lean UX, and its principle.

What is Lean UX?

Lean UX is a set of practices with a collaborative, cross-functional way of product development stimulated by the Lean startup and agile methodology. Product design strategies have grown over time, and the evaluation of product design is Lean UX.
The methodology of Lean UX has been injected by Gothelf (2013) from the Lean startup principles of Ries (2011).
The practices of Lean UX are determined to transform conventional HCD work to perform better iterative and fast software development. Lean UX aims to create a rapid product with limited resources acknowledging the best customer satisfaction.
According to Gothelf (2013), Lean UX provides less attention to documentation but emphasizes building a shared understanding of the actual product that addresses the true nature of the product in a collaborative and cross-functional way.
The following sections will cover the details about Lean UX, namely the foundation of lean UX, the principle of Lean UX, and the Lean UX process.

Foundation of Lean UX

The foundation of Lean UX consists of design thinking, agile software development, and Lean Startup methodology.

Design thinking

The president and CEO of IDEO (Tim Brown) says, design thinking is a power of innovation by direct observation of what people need, like or dislike. Based on that product is built to persist in the market. Design thinking is significantly crucial for Lean UX because it involved the explicate positions of every aspect of a business with the design method. This approach addresses to solve the problem and encourages it to use for non-designers as well.

2. Agile software development

The heart of Lean UX is agile software development which emerges from the core principle of agile software development (Gothelf, 2013).

3. Lean startup method

The method of lean startup addresses a loop called MBL (Build-Measure-Learn) that minimizes the risk and fast learning approach to build MVP that transforms into the means of learning as early as possible.

Lean UX principles

Gothelf (2013, pp. 7–13) represents 15 lean principles.

Cross-Functional Teams
Lean UX advocates collaborating with diverse disciplines such as software engineering, product management, interaction design, visual design, marketing, and quality assurance.
Small, Dedicated, Colocated
It is recommended to make a small team of not more than ten people, which enables accessible communication, exchanges instantly even it enables to build good relationships among the team members.
Progress = Outcomes, Not Output
The achievement of the business goals is regarded as outcomes, and Lean UX measures the process in order to determine the business outcomes.
Problem-Focused Teams
This principle focuses on problem-solving activities rather than features. It empowers team members to come up with great solutions combining in-depth self-importance and ownership of the solution.
Removing Waste
Lean UX is goals and outcomes oriented. If something does not contribute to the project are advised to remove from the process. A discipline of waste elimination activity that help teams to learn faster and rapid progress.
Small Batch Size
Lean UX addresses to create a limited design that is significantly important to move forward and makes the team productive.
Continuous Discovery
This is the process of engaging the potential customer during the design and development; the main goal is to understand user activity.
GOOB
The New User-Centricity GOOB stands for “getting out of the building.” The concept of GOOB focuses on spending time with user and explore the marketplace outside of the building to understand the user need instead of meeting in the office room.
Shared Understanding
It is a currency of Lean UX that concentrated on the combined knowledge of the team.
Anti-Pattern
Rockstars, Gurus, and Ninjas This principle advocated the team-based mentality.
Externalizing
Work It addresses ensuring the participation of others in public view in terms of information sharing activities.
Making over Analysis
In order to create the first version of the product, Lean UX creates value instead of spending time in the conference room.
Learning over Growth
This principle persists on learning first then scaling.
Permission to Fail
Lean UX teams is allowed to experiment with the idea in order to discover the best solution for business, even the idea fails.
Getting Out of the Deliverables Business
This principle advocates avoiding documentation from the design process as it does not resolve the customer problem, but the excellent product does.