Ignite: Lean Startup “I (heart) ugly”

Back in June, I was invited to participate in a session of Ignite: Lean Startup at Pivotal Labs NYC. I gave a short talk about working quickly at low fidelity to help teams create a shared vision, illustrated with some examples from the Knowsy project I worked on with Innovation Games Online.

Ignite is a short-form presentation format similar to pecha-kucha. Speakers are allowed just 20 slides which advance at 20 seconds each, whether you’re ready or not. The format encourages you to be brief, memorable and funny if you can manage it. If you want a challenge to your presentation skills, I recommend the format!

For more talks offered that night, check out the YouTube Playlist.

Think, Make, Check: the Lean User Experience Intensive

Group photoJosh Seiden and I taught a sold-out session of the Lean User Experience Intensive (LUXi) July 9-10, 2011 at Pivotal Labs NYC. Here’s some information for those of you who didn’t get a chance to join us. We hope to see you at a future event!

Event summary

For a participant’s perspective, please see Nelly Yusupova’s post on the Webgrrls blog.

Eventbrite announcement

You know that great design is critical to the success of your business. It differentiates your product, defines the experience, and creates passionate users and loyal customers. Yet, many teams today struggle with design. Designers are hard to hire, working with an agency is expensive and doesn’t transfer knowledge to the team. If you do have designers and developers working together, It’s challenging to bring UX methods into an agile process without creating a bottleneck and tensions in the team.

Lean UX is a way to solve these problems. It’s a deeply practical and collaborative way of working. Lean UX uses rapid iterative cycles to create and improve products, simplify decision-making, and ensure you are building things that people want.

The Intensive is a two-day workshop for startups who want to improve the user experience of their product or individuals who want to work more effectively by using lean user experience methods. Over the weekend, you’ll be introduced to key principles and methods, and you’ll learn by doing. You’ll work collaboratively with your team-mates and experienced coaches to gain skills you can put to work immediately after the workshop.

Materials on SlideShare

http://www.slideshare.net/jseiden/lu-xi-intro-to-lean-ux
http://www.slideshare.net/LaneHalley/luxi-nyc-intro-to-customer-development
http://www.slideshare.net/LaneHalley/luxi-nyc-activities-list
http://www.slideshare.net/LaneHalley/lu-xr-lean-ux-customer-discovery

Related links

http://luxr.posterous.com/
http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/
http://www.svproduct.com/articles
http://www.balancedteam.org/