The Lean Product Playbook: How to Innovate with Minimum Viable Products and Rapid Customer Feedback

by Dan Olsen

you can ask users, “How easy or difficult is the product to use?” and allow ratings on a seven-point bipolar scale:

“How well did the product meet your needs?” or, “How satisfied are you with the product?”

You won't get any credit for having a valuable feature if users can't find it or can't figure out how to use it.

Ease of learning is also an important usability attribute. How much time and effort does it take a user to progress from having no knowledge of how your product works, to working knowledge, to mastery?

Delight, which goes beyond simply avoiding user frustration, means evoking positive emotions.

Customers see your product before they start using it, and visual appeal helps create a positive first impression. A pleasant design can convey a sense of high quality, make a product seem more credible, and make users feel at ease.

A product based on a good conceptual design feels intuitive and easy to use.

this is the person for whom you are designing the experience.

There is often a tension in UX design when you need to address both types of users in a single product.

short. IA is the design discipline responsible for defining how the information and functionality of a software product should be structured.

Good IA organizes a product in a manner that users find intuitive, with labels that are easy to understand, resulting in good usability and findability.

Findability refers to how easy it is for users to find what they're looking for in the product.

IA deals with the product's feature set at a high level: what the features are, how they should be organized, and how they should be labeled.

interaction design, which determines how your product and the user interact with one another.

Any user interface control or link with which the user can interact (click, hover, drag, type, tap, swipe, etc.) falls under the umbrella of interaction design.

if your design involves different states that impact what the user can and can't do, they are also part of your interaction design.

States that are important for interaction design can also often be closely tied to your conceptual design

Error messages should be well written and clearly explain to the user why the error occurred and what they can do to fix it.

Response time is another aspect of product feedback. If users click a button and there is no resulting indication that something is happening, they will assume their click didn't register or that your product isn't working. Slow performance creates poor interaction design. Users need confirmation that the system is receiving their actions. Even if the system's final response to the action cannot be accomplished quickly, users should receive some feedback to acknowledge their click or tap

If the product is going to take a while to complete the requested task, it is important to give users a sense of progress and how much time remains.

You are focused on generating, not evaluating ideas at this point.

Aside from creating an aesthetically pleasing product, good visual design helps reinforce the visual hierarchy (discussed later in this chapter) and contributes to ease of use. It can also convey your brand personality, create user delight, and differentiate your product from others.

Color contributes to aesthetics and is used to make certain elements on the page stand out more than others. You can also use color to convey certain attributes or emotions.

A common approach is to select two fonts: one for body text and one for large text, such as headings. It's common to see websites and mobile applications use a sans serif font for body text and a complementary serif font for headings.

Customers need to be able to look at an icon and understand what it means. However, it can be challenging to convey an icon's intended meaning because it is so small and is just a symbol without any text. If a standardized symbol already exists for an icon in your design, I strongly recommend you use it instead of trying to invent a new symbol.

The word gestalt means “an organized whole that is perceived as more than the sum of its parts.”

According to the Gestalt principle of proximity, the brain perceives objects that are closer together as more related than objects that are farther apart. Therefore, you should put related objects close to one another in your designs.

The Gestalt principle of similarity maintains that the brain perceives objects that share similar characteristics as more related than objects that don't share those characteristics. Therefore, in your designs, objects that are similar or related should look similar by having the same shape, size, or color.

The brain assumes that larger objects are more important and smaller objects are less important. It also assumes that elements with high contrast—for example, a color that makes them stand out or “pop”—are more important.

The location of elements also affects visual hierarchy, because users start reading at the top of the page. In English and other left-to-right languages, users start reading on the left side of the page. Therefore, all other things being equal, people will look at elements near the top left corner of the screen first.

It is harder to design for a smaller screen due to the space constraints, which require more tradeoffs. As a result, many teams embrace a “mobile first” approach—designing for the smallest screen first since this forces them to prioritize what is most important.

Users often have very little text to guide them, so labels on buttons and links need to be clear and easy to understand.

Descriptions of features and instructions should be written in simple text using words that users understand—not internal or industry jargon. Error messages should be helpful and explanatory instead of cryptic.

that innovators may be willing to tolerate a substandard UX for a breakthrough product that provides cutting edge benefits. But as you try to advance through the technology adoption lifecycle to penetrate additional segments, they will not be as tolerant, and UX becomes more important to product-market fit.

“product blindness”: blind spots for the issues that a new user will readily encounter within minutes of using your product.

I recommend conducting user tests with one customer at a time for the best results. You can speak with more than one customer at a time, but you usually get suboptimal results due to group dynamics.

Some participants may not speak their mind openly for fear of being judged or criticized. One or two outspoken people often dominate the discussion, drowning out other voices. Participants also often experience groupthink, where all or most of the group artificially converges on the same opinions, which leads to inaccurate data.

present. In my experience, the more observers you have, the more worried about being judged some customers can be. Many moderators like to have a note-taker present so they can focus on conducting the user test, which is fine.

Moderated means that the researcher is present and conducting the test with the customer. Unmoderated implies that no moderator is present; instead, customers are provided with the artifact or product to test and guidance on what to do.

One advantage of unmoderated testing over moderated testing is that there is no risk of the moderator influencing the results.

You can ensure a good fit by using a screener—a set of questions, like a survey, that you ask prospective participants.

The best way out of this trap is to just blindly schedule users on a routine basis.

The ability to watch customers use our product in their real world setting gave us lots of valuable insights.

Just watch people using the platform?

Some people on your team might be tempted to record in-person user tests instead of watching them live with the idea of watching them later. I've been involved with a large number of tests, and I've never seen anyone actually go back and watch the recordings. Chances are that if someone on your team isn't motivated enough to attend the test, they aren't going to be motivated enough to watch the recording. Plus, many customers don't like the idea of being recorded.

It's important to start the user test off on the right foot. It's a good idea to try to spend a minute or two chit-chatting to get to know the person a bit. Building a rapport and making them feel comfortable usually results in the user being more honest with you and giving you more feedback during the test. It's also important to set some expectations. Most people are nice and don't want to say critical things, especially right to your face.

Let them know that they won't hurt anyone's feelings. I like to point out that their critical feedback will help make the product better—which is the whole reason for conducting the user test.

Discovery questions are great for exploring the problem space and your value proposition with customers. You can start by asking them about their current behavior and feelings about the key benefit you plan to provide.

After discovery, you transition to the product feedback portion of the user test. The moderator's job is to solicit the user's feedback on the product in an effective manner without perturbing the results. The top way that moderators perturb the results is by asking leading questions,

“echoing back” is a powerful technique to ensure you understand the user and to probe deeper.