NextGen UX 3.0 – Strategy First Approach
Bernard Schokman Photography

NextGen UX 3.0 – Strategy First Approach

NextGen UX 3.0 – Strategy First Approach

NextGen UX Design

Two of the most critical parts of UX are your People and Process. I’d like to share our UX journey and process so far, because we've found it to be a very punchy process for startups. Here’s how we’re experimenting with the concept of Planets, Orbits and Gravities to design our NextGen UX 3.0 funded product from the ground up. The brain-child of our Mad Scientist Zakk Goodsell.

Download the free UX Like a BOSS eBook and Video Series.

Celebrate All Wins (And Learnings)

Quick Background: In 2015 I decided to dedicate a day a week to a start-up business after being contacted by Product Guru Matthew Desailly and CEO Bianca Board. Since then, I've worked with them to commence the design of the NextGen of their existing product and in doing so change their Culture. There was some start-stop due to their business as usual. Albeit; we did implement the practice of Agile Scrum, User Experience Design, Design Studios and some product to boot. We experimented with Technology and Platforms. All in all, some good foundational UX and Cultural habits/rituals. In October 2016 due to lack of velocity, the business decided to seek investment and hey presto - Hello Foxley. 

A Board With Vision

When our three board members invested and joined, they asked us to review our accomplishments, direction and approach to date. We ran an Inception Workshop to breathe new life into the initiative. This was true Innovation Thinking on behalf of James O'Donnell, Chris Pattas and Chris Riquier. It meant we were able to discover whether there were better, more efficient, business-savvy approaches to take than the one we were on.

Inception Workshop

We kicked off Elabor8's 5-day workshop with the goal to firm up our Value Proposition, what Problems we solve, the Epics, Features and Functions required to solve them and how we’d slice up a Spike (Test), Alpha (Half-Baked), Beta (Almost Baked) and R1(Fully Baked) Product.

A Reflective Retrospective

The first day we reflected on the road we’d travelled, where we’d come from and where we thought we were going. As a group using post-it notes, we contributed to the following whiteboard illustrated headings:

  • What pushed us forward?
  • What held us back?
  • What we needed to watch out for?
  • What was still unknown?

It was good to reflect on what had been achieved. We're always so focused on where we're going or want to go we can often lose sight of the accomplishments(s) already made. 

 

It's also good for the soul to stop and smell the roses.

Identifying The Epics (The Planets in the Solar System)

We called out the top 12 EPICS. As a group in total silence on the whiteboard, we prioritised and re-prioritised them. We could’ve also used the Affinity Diagramming “Voting” technique for both the 'Reflective Retrospective' and 'Identifying the Epics'.

EPIC’s were then fleshed out into Feature Sets. The term “EPIC” is what we use to identify high-level features. EPICS are all listed down the LHS of the glass board above.

The 1x Design Studio (Design Divergence)

The next day we ran what’s called a DESIGN STUDIO for each of the 12 major EPICS and what they meant to us. You can see some of our sketches below. At this stage we didn’t really have a lot of actual designs to contribute, but what it did do was allow us to come up with some really innovative ideas we hadn’t yet imagined (divergent thinking). To encourage convergent thinking, we would have simply continued through the second and third cycle of the Design Studio. But we chose not to speed the process. 12 Epics is a lot of Design Studios. 

Everyone walked away with a high-level shared understanding of each feature set and also a new rush of energy from all the possibilities that had been thrown around the table. 

User Problems (Core Team Perspective)

Then we identified what user problems we thought we were solving. We used team knowledge as initial research because there’s already locked up knowledge about existing Customers in the team that will focus our research efforts later on.

I find leveraging the team knowledge initially much faster and more efficient than launching into conducting external research. You can more efficiently allocate research resources and investment proving/disproving assumptions rather than looking for them. We used basic affinity mapping and discovered 87 user problems! 

We grouped User Problems into 6 key areas - People, Produce, Price, Place, Promotion, Process.

 Now, The Feature Sets (Gravity)

For each EPIC we fleshed out the feature sets and arranged them in a circle around the EPIC, visually illustrating it’s planetary weight (Gravity).

We then visually marked Features that solved a user problem and that quite clearly visually guided us towards what we should design first for Alpha/Beta. More importantly, it also showed us what we could do away with for Beta because those features weren’t solving any or enough User Problems.

Market Value (Your VP/USP)

We used the following categories to categorise Epics already in the market and those that we’re not- discovering where our VP/USP was. The categories we chose were Common, Uncommon, Rare, Legendary and Epic.

That's probably a stack of good info to get you started on the right track. It's a nice way to start your next project! If you're unclear on any of this process just get in touch. By talking it through it solidifies it for us as well.

Want to know more about how to implement UX? 

Download the free UX Like a BOSS eBook and Video Series.

I help business with their Agile-UX training, process and culture to improve product relevance and delivery!"

Bernard Schokman
Principal BernardSchokman.comUXTraining.com.au; Head of UX & Innovation at Foxley and Academic Sessional at Victoria University

[email protected] +61 414 486 876

Dr.Meenakshi Ingole

Assistant Professor at Delhi University

8 年

Cool

回复
Richard Shy

Agile Coach | Visual Facilitator | CSM | CSPO

8 年

It was certainly a blast. Definitely one of the most memorable experiences I've had in my career. Thank you, Bernard and the Foxley team! I hope that the product is going well! I wish you guys nothing but success!

Thanks for that add Paul. Welcome. Richard Shy what a blast!!!

Thanks for the credit Bernard, and a big shout out to Richard Shy who facilitated the Elabor8 product discovery and inception process.

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