THE USER EXPERIENCE TEAM OF ONE
A RESEARCH AND DESIGN SURVIVAL GUIDE
Leah Buley
The User Experience Team of One
A Research and Design Survival Guide
Leah Buley
Rosenfeld Media, LLC
457 Third Street, #4R
Brooklyn, New York
11215 USA
On the Web: www.rosenfeldmedia.com
Please send errors to: errata@rosenfeldmedia.com
Publisher: Louis Rosenfeld
Developmental Editor: Marta Justak
Interior Layout: Danielle Foster
Cover Design: The Heads of State
Cover Illustrator: Josh Cochran
Indexer: Sharon Shock
Proofreader: Sue Boshers
© 2013 Leah Buley
All Rights Reserved
ISBN: 1-933820-18-7
ISBN-13: 978-1-933820-18-7
LCCN: 2013939951
Printed and bound in the United States of America
For Theo and Chris, my boy and my man.
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
Who Should Read This Book?
While many people are attracted to the field of user experience because they want to be champions for users, simply loving users doesn’t guarantee that you’ll be a successful user experience team of one. UX teams of one are people who love users and also make sure that designs get tested, business people’s questions are answered, design problems receive an appropriate amount of creative exploration, UX specifications are implemented according to plan, the product is continually monitored and improved upon, and support for UX is ever growing. And they do it all without a roadmap or a blueprint, with the help of people who may or may not be active supporters of UX themselves.
This book is for anyone who is interested in taking on the challenging and rewarding work of spreading a user-centered mindset to new places where it’s never been before. While this book is intended to be approachable for anyone who picks it up, it was written with two particular audiences in mind.
• One core audience for this book is people who are already working on product teams in another role but are interested in transitioning into the field of UX. If that sounds like you, that may mean that you’ve never thought of yourself as a UX professional before, and you’re interested in crossing over into the field, either as a main role or part of an adjacent role. For this type of reader, Chapters 1 and 2 are a must.
• Another core audience for this book is more experienced practitioners who are seeking ways to work more effectively within a cross-functional team. For this type of reader, Chapters 3 and 4 are highly recommended.
What’s in This Book?
The user experience team of one ethos is equal parts philosophy and practice (see Figure 0.1). It focuses on having the right attitude, seeking out opportunities, being patient and inclusive, and doing the best work you can. Between philosophy and practice, I’ll cover not just guiding principles, but also the nuts and bolts of how to successfully run a UX project as a team of one.
Accordingly, this book is organized in two parts: Part I is philosophy, and Part II is practice.
FIGURE 0.1
Being a successful UX team of one is equal parts thought and action, head and hand, philosophy and practice.
Part I, “Philosophy,” is a frank walk-through of the UX team of one’s concerns, from start to finish. In this section, I’ll explain what it means to be a UX team of one, how to establish a successful foundation, how to grow yourself and your career, and how to involve others and build support for UX along the way.
• Chapter 1, “UX 101,” gives an overview of what UX is, how it came to be, and what it takes to be a UX practitioner.
• Chapter 2, “Getting Started,” focuses on how to begin, including the fundamentals of user research and design for the new and aspiring UX team of one.
• Chapter 3, “Building Support for Your Work,” addresses some of the most challenging parts of life as a team of one: how to build support and do great work in spite of real-world organizational and interpersonal constraints.
• Chapter 4, “Growing Yourself and Your Career,” is a blueprint for thriving and flourishing as you grow yourself and your career in user experience.
In Part II, “Practice,” I’ll focus on the nuts and bolts of user experience work. This half of the book is intended to function as a ready reference, full of practical methods that have been selected and, in some cases, adapted to fit the realities of a UX team-of-one’s situation. What is this reality? Most importantly, teams of one must rely heavily on their non-UX colleagues to help them get work done. That means there is a preference here for methods that can be done in a quick-and-dirty fashion, and an even greater bias toward methods that invite collaboration and cross-functional participation. In some cases, these methods may already be familiar to you, but the approach and tips are adapted for the work of a team of one.
• Chapter 5, “Planning and Discovery Methods,” helps you set up a UX project for success. It includes planning and discovery of the team’s requirements and expectations. It also covers techniques for establishing a shared UX strategy with the team.
• Chapter 6, “Research Methods,” is all about research. This includes research with users, the centerpiece of a UX practice, as well as research into competitors and best practices.
• Chapter 7, “Design Methods,” covers methods and techniques for inclusive and participatory user experience design.
• Chapter 8, “Testing and Validation Methods,” provides methods for validating that your strategy, research, and design work has led you in the right direction.
• Chapter 9, “Evangelism Methods,” brings our discussion of philosophy and practice full circle, and finishes up with approaches for building support and awareness of UX throughout your organization.
• Chapter 10, “What’s Next,” closes with a personal challenge for you to think critically about where you’re taking your work in UX and how it aligns with the growth of the field overall.
Parts I and II are heavily cross-referenced, so methods that are described in detail in Part II are explained in context in Part I and vice versa.
The book is designed so that you can dip in and out as needed when you face a specific challenge or are working at a particular point in a project. That said, reading Part I from start to finish will give you a sense of the common growth path for a UX team of one. And reading Part II sequentially will give you a complete plan for how to run a UX project.
What Comes with This Book?
This book’s companion website (rosenfeldmedia.com/books/ux-team-of-one/) contains some templates, discussion, and additional content. The book’s diagrams and other illustrations are available under a Creative Commons license (when possible) for you to download and include in your own presentations. You can find these on Flickr at www.flickr.com/photos/rosenfeldmedia/sets/.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
What is a user experience team of one?
A UX team of one is someone who works in a situation where they are the key person driving a user-centered design philosophy. Certainly, if you are the only person in your company practicing (or aspiring to practice) user-centered design, you are a user experience team of one. However, even in organizations with multiple UX professionals, if you regularly work on a team where you are the only UX person, you are a UX team of one. Chapter 3 explains the kinds of challenges that UX teams of one commonly face, and explains what to do about them.
I’m a freelancer. Is this book for me?
The User Experience Team of One focuses primarily on people working in or with organizations. It is n
ot explicitly geared toward freelancers, consultants, or contractors. Still, much of this book may be relevant for independents, insofar as they, too, must often work with the cross-functional teams of their clients. And for readers who are considering going out on their own, be sure to check out the section “Considering Going Independent?” in Chapter 4.
What’s different about life as a UX team of one?
If you are a UX team of one, you have these unique challenges:
• You feel like a jack of all trades, master of none. You do a variety of work: probably some design, some research, some writing, some testing, and some evangelism. You care about your work, and you want to do it well. But being a generalist, you may feel as if you are spread a bit thin. You may also wonder at times if you’re “doing it right.” Would a specialist’s level of knowledge make a tough design problem or difficult conversation easier to get through?
• You need to evangelize. You probably work with or for an organization that doesn’t yet “get it.” That is, they haven’t fully bought into the value and purpose of UX. Or, even if they do value user experience, they may not be in a position to fully fund and build a robust UX practice. Either way, that means that you’re constantly seeking to educate and influence.
• You’re learning on the job. You need to figure out how to do your work on your own. You may have discussion lists and professional communities that you can turn to for peer-to-peer advice, but in your day-to-day work, you often have to make an educated guess and then trust and defend your hunches as to the best next steps.
• You’re working with constrained resources. The biggest challenge for teams of one is time. There’s only one of you, and there’s a lot of work to be done.
• You’re charting your own course. No one in your organization has done this before. You’re figuring out your own career path, without a guide or a manual to follow.
What makes this role interesting is the dramatic tension between needing to inspire through expertise and trying to build your own expertise at the same time. This leads to a unique set of challenges that go well beyond simply trying to do good design. It makes skills like facilitation, flexibility, assertiveness, and persuasiveness central to the team of one’s toolkit. This interesting tension has practical considerations, as well as philosophical ones—and that simple fact is the inspiration for this book.
Chapters 2 and 3 explain the working conditions that a team of one often experiences, while Chapters 5 through 9 provide specific methods that are optimized for those working conditions.
Is this just an intro to a UX book?
Yes and no. This book is intended to be accessible to people who are just starting out in user experience, as well as seasoned practitioners. Chapter 1 provides an overview of user experience and can serve as a basic introduction to the field. However, the methods in Chapters 5 through 9 aren’t just typical UX methods. They have been chosen because they educate and involve others who may not be familiar with or supportive of user-centered design, while requiring less time and fewer resources.
CONTENTS
How to Use This Book
Frequently Asked Questions
Foreword
Introduction
PART I: PHILOSOPHY
CHAPTER 1
UX 101
Defining User Experience
An Example
Where UX Comes From
Where UX Professionals Come From
If You Only Do One Thing...
CHAPTER 2
Getting Started
Get to Know the UX Toolkit
Establish a Point of View on the Work to Be Done
Get to Know Your Users
Start Designing
If You Only Do One Thing...
CHAPTER 3
Building Support for Your Work
Principles over Process
Dealing with People Issues
Dealing with Organizational Issues
Responses to Common Objections
If You Only Do One Thing...
CHAPTER 4
Professional Communities
Continuing Education
Making a Case for Career Growth
Moving Out and On
If You Only Do One Thing...
PART II: PRACTICE
CHAPTER 5
Planning and Discovery Methods
METHOD 1
UX Questionnaire
METHOD 2
UX Project Plan
METHOD 3
Listening Tour
METHOD 4
Opportunity Workshop
METHOD 5
Project Brief
METHOD 6
Strategy Workshop
If You Only Do One Thing...
CHAPTER 6
Research Methods
METHOD 7
Learning Plan
METHOD 8
Guerilla User Research
METHOD 9
Proto-Personas
METHOD 10
Heuristic Markup
METHOD 11
Comparative Assessment
METHOD 12
Content Patterns
If You Only Do One Thing...
CHAPTER 7
Design Methods
METHOD 13
Design Brief
METHOD 14
Design Principles
METHOD 15
Sketching
METHOD 16
Sketchboards
METHOD 17
Task Flows
Wireframes
If You Only Do One Thing...
CHAPTER 8
Testing and Validation Methods
METHOD 19
Paper and Interactive Prototypes
METHOD 20
Black Hat Session
METHOD 21
Quick-and-Dirty Usability Test
METHOD 22
Five-Second Test
METHOD 23
UX Health Check
If You Only Do One Thing...
CHAPTER 9
Evangelism Methods
METHOD 24
Bathroom UX
METHOD 25
Mini Case Studies
METHOD 26
Peer-to-Peer Learning Community
METHOD 27
Pyramid Evangelism
If You Only Do One Thing...
CHAPTER 10
What’s Next?
The Evolution of UX
The Endurance of Design
The Secret Agenda of the UX Team of One
If You Only Do One Thing...
APPENDIX
Guide to the Methods in Part II
Index
Acknowledgments
About the Author
FOREWORD
There are some things you should never do at the same time: Move. Have a baby. Adopt a puppy. Change jobs. Leah did all of this while also writing this book.
And while anyone who knows Leah shouldn’t be surprised by her ability to pull all of this off, this speaks to a tenacity shared by those who find themselves in a “UX Team of One.” There’s a certain amount of grit, or perhaps it’s foolhardiness, that allows us to plunge into the unknown, the untried, the undiscovered.
My own entry into the user experience world was a solitary one: dot-com boom. Lone visual designer. Surrounded by a team of engineers. Like many others, I had to look around and figure out on my own how to do things. Fifteen years later, I’m delighted to report that’s still the case. Even as a consultant, hired for my expertise, I’m still learning and making stuff up as I go along. We all are! What’s more, this learning is not all solitary—we have the shared experiences of a maturing community to draw upon. What Leah has shared in this book will no doubt add new tips and processes to your own bank of knowledge, as it has mine.
But, beneath all the artifacts and processes, there’s something more that keeps us going, somethi
ng timeless, something fundamental: grit and curiosity. These traits are what keep us in the game. I suspect most of us aren’t happy to leave well enough alone. And it is this dissatisfaction, this searching for something better, combined with a deep empathy, which defines the UX community. Everything else flows from this core.
I was fortunate to see Leah debut her “UX Team of One” talk at the 2008 Information Architecture Summit. (I still have my button!) Aside from a stellar presentation to a standing-room-only crowd, I recall Leah’s no-nonsense approach to design. From the hand-sketched slides to the quick exploration of different ways to refresh an aging online service, it all just made sense. Cut the crap, do what needs to be done. No more, no less. Her presentation was at once obvious and inspiring. That was one of the few slide decks I looked for after the conference.
Which is why I was thrilled to find out later that Leah would be sharing these ideas in a book. We need to exchange rigid processes for more flexible ways of responding. Yes, there’s merit to a hardened, repeatable process, or having a team of specialists to work with, but working alone means jumping in there and getting things done, whatever it takes! No nonsense. No formal process. This is better than defined roles and responsibilities. Working alone brings with it a certain amount of freedom and autonomy. We can shape the path before us. For this reason, working alone is something to savor, rather than endure.
Certainly, individuals need a team to pull off great things. But I’ve found that nearly every successful product story can be traced back to one or more devoted mavericks, individuals who pushed forward, against all odds.
And here’s the bigger truth: Whether you find yourself all alone or in a team of like-minded folks, we are all individuals with a unique voice, opinions, and diverse experiences that define us. We are all a UX Team of One. My challenge to you: Draw upon this diversity—magical things happen at the intersection of seemingly unrelated ideas. Don’t let a job title define you. Do what makes sense, not what process dictates. And most of all, never stop playing and learning. If we can all hang on for the ride, there is no limit to the places we’ll go!