UX survival

guide
by Nicole Capuana

@ncapuana
 Once upon a time
in a kingdom of robots....

@ncapuana
 Hello!
● Director of User Experience at LeanDog
● Founding member of HER Ideas in Motion, a
non-profit teaching girls how to code,
design games, & build robots
● Organizer of Cleveland Lean Startup Circle
● Over 15 years in UX covering the whole
spectrum - HTML/CSS. interaction design,
visual design, information architecture, user
research, usability & content strategy

@ncapuana
 ● Agile maximizing value,
Saint Possum maximizing feedback, and
embracing change.
● Lean minimizing waste,
validating or invalidating
assumptions, learning and
adapting to deliver value
incrementally.
● UX everything your users
experience

@ncapuana
 Lesson 1

UX is part of the team

● Team member
● More than wireframes or mockups
● From beginning to end
● Stories, chores, and refactoring just
like development
● Dedicated
ideal
● 2 projects
max
If you don’t have UX on the team,
you need to get them

@ncapuana
 Lesson 2

strategy & vision before development

● Allows exploration,
experimentation
● View of the whole
● Supports business
case & telling story
● Defines scope
● UX led, design
spikes
● Good, Better, Best
mentality

@ncapuana
 Lesson 3

Make UX Work Visible

● Represent UX work in release
plan & backlog
● Design spikes, chores, & cards
● Estimation is on par with Dev
● Put your work up on the wall
● Share your work with tools like
InvisionApp and Zeplin

@ncapuana
 Lesson 4

Pair on Everything
● Cross-functional powers
● Shared understanding
● Cross-pollination
● You do better work, faster
● Promotes a whole team
mindset

@ncapuana
 Lesson 5

Be a Balanced Team
● High ● Make a happy team ● Find better ways
collaboration to work
● Skills not roles
● Assess
desirability,
feasibility &
usability
together

@ncapuana
 Lesson 6

Find Your Balance

● Let ego go
● Let it go
● Small, imperfect, but
deliverable (varying ● May feel
levels of fidelity) uncomfortable at first
● Expand your skills ● There’s always more
(test, write stories) to do

@ncapuana
 Lesson 7

Test Early & Often

● Test the riskiest, the ● Get it in your user's’ hands ASAP
most valuable ● Design incrementally in thin slices
● Build on the best
practices so you don’t
have to test everything
● Embrace Test-Driven
Design
● Make data informed
decisions
● 10x, 100x, 1000x

@ncapuana
 Lesson 8

There Will Be DeBt

● Issues will be found once ● Help team prioritize the
you start implementing or most valuable or severe
building first
● Connecting towards the
whole can reveal spots that
no longer work well

@ncapuana
● No UX
Don’t Fall into TRaps
● Playing
catch-up
● Working in ● Non designers
silos or alone designing
● Not embracing change

● No time for users

● Mockup every ● Accepting status-quo
screen in ● “I just know what
Photoshop they want”

@ncapuana
 You Can Do It
● Don’t look back
● Make do with what you
got and take a step to
change

@ncapuana
 You asked - additional readings
Books
● Don’t Make Me Think AND Rocket Surgery Made Easy, Steve Krug
● The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web and Beyond, Jesse James Garrett
● Universal Methods of Design: 100 Ways to Research Complex Problems, Develop Innovative Ideas, and Design Effective
Solutions Bella Martin, Bruce M. Hanington
● Agile Experience Design: A Digital Designer's Guide to Agile, Lean, and Continuous Lindsay Ratcliffe, Marc McNeill
● Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience Jeff Gothelf, Josh Seiden

A fantastic and comprehensive list - The Only UX Reading List

Design Studio Method

● Todd Zaki Warfel (video)
● Design Studio: A Method for Concepting,
● Critique & Iteration
● Speed Design Studio -
● Design Studio for context-aware products
● Introduction to Design Studio Methodology
● Design of Design Studio
● Design Studio and Agile UX Process and Pitfalls
@ncapuana