#uxprinciples

Ash Maurya is the man behind the development of the lean canvas. I think his work, including book titled Ŕunning Lean´, is a great read. 

He talks about how we need to ĺove the problem and not the solution´-  he starts by trying to paint the picture of the launch of a product and the response from a lot of customers and the effect of this. Who do you listen to? what is valuable and what isn't? He relates this to feature requests and says that even if you end up listening to the most valuable customers, you might still end up building things that they don't use. He then goes on to try and understand his customerś feature requests, by uncovering the root of the problem that triggered the request in the first place. Where were they? What were they trying to do? and Why? 

So the way the Lean Canvas is different from the original Business Canvas is that it forces you to think holistically about your business. Ash says that the customer lives in the core of your business and plays a strong influential role than any other component of the canvas, and this can therefore be further extended to include the ethos of ´loving the customer and not your solution´, which was detailed but a consultancy called Spark 23. 

1. Problems are derived from your Customers. 2. Solutions must satisfy your Customers. 3. Your UVP must appeal to your Customers. 4. You reach your Customers through your Channels. 5. Your revenue streams align with how your Customers want to pay for your Solution. 6. Many of your Key Metrics should measure Customer behaviours. (Spark 23)

We need to develop a deeper relationship with our customer and ask the ´5 Whyś to really understand what they are thinking, and this iterative questioning will then have the effect of creating an iterative Design Methodology and through this we will better target our Userś needs. 

In gaining the right fit when it comes to the Problem/Solution fit and the Product/Market fit, Ash talks about how we need to understand the iteration cycle as two stages. The first is about understanding the problem and defining a solution. It is after this that you iterate towards a Product/Market fit by testing whether you have built something that people want to use. This is done in two stages; first qualitative (at the micro scale) and then quantitative (at the macro scale). 

We can take this further and also mention that these requirements need to fit the Product Roadmap and maintain the principles of User Experience;

Useful: Your content should be original and fulfill a need Usable: Site must be easy to use Desirable: Image, identity, brand, and other design elements are used to evoke emotion and appreciation Findable: Content needs to be navigable and locatable onsite and offsite Accessible: Content needs to be accessible to people with disabilities Credible: Users must trust and believe what you tell them

It is through meeting these principles that we will be able to gain that deeper understanding of our users and also help answer the ´Whys´. 

Furthermore in having gained an understanding of our users through loving the customer not the solution, and answering the ẃhys´ behind what a user does, through maintaining the UX principles, we are able to work with an iterative build, measure, learn loop. (See figure below)

These principles together, contribute to the Product Roadmap and help to understand where we might need to make improvements, conduct interviews, surveys, focus group discussions. 

Furthermore, if we were to try and target our users, and the deliverables that might be required to help target solutions, we could derive something similar to the diagram below. It is from understanding the needs of the different user groups, that we can then deliver on tailored solutions. 

Another perspective on this is the Product Thinking diagram. In having established the User first, we are able to outline our Strategy (a problem/solution fit with the aid of a Roadmap) and then determine output and measure success. 

For each page you design for mobile, you should be thinking about three questions:

Where am I?

How do I get out of here?