Takýto dizajn netvoria samotári, ale spolupracujúce tímy, ktoré sa každou
iteráciou dostávajú bližšie k želanému výsledku. Hľadáme človeka s vizuálnym
cítením a systematickým myslením, schopného poňať projekt koncepčne tak, aby
vytvoril pekné vizuálne dielo, ale aj potešil používateľov. Takého, ktorý
preferuje čistý, inteligentný, trvácny dizajn pred tým dočasným trendovým.

V skratke, hľadáme senior vizuálneho dizajnéra, ktorý chce pracovať v
Bratislave.

Naša predstava o tebe
 * Si schopný pochopiť komplikované a navonok nesúvisiace detaily, dokážeš ich
   pomocou dizajnu odkomunikovať tak, aby pôsobili jasne a jednoducho.
 * Máš skúsenosti s prezentáciou a obhajobou svojich riešení a dizajnov pred
   klientom a rozumieš hodnote dizajnu v biznisovom kontexte.
 * Vieš spolupracovať v tímovom prostredí, podporovať a inšpirovať ostatných
   prostredníctvom vzájomnej vízie a spoločného plánovania.
 * Máš skúsenosti s vedením dizajnérov a väčších tímov.
 * Tvoje grafické výstupy sú kvalitné, konzistentné a postavené na solídnom
   koncepte, ktorý sa dá ľahko odkomunikovať, udržiavať, rozvíjať a
   implementovať.
 * Tvoj prístup k dizajnu je systematický
 * Poznáš princípy typografie (hierarchia a vertikálny rytmus), pri dizajne ich
   vieš zohľadniť.
 * Grid a pixel-perfect dizajn sú pre teba samozrejmosťou.
 * Vieš konverzovať plynule po anglicky (máme pár zahraničných kolegov a
   klientov).
 * Si zodpovedný, organizovaný, máš dobrý time management a vieš priorizovať
   svoje úlohy.
 * Prototypuješ, experimentuješ a testuješ – tvoje dizajny nie sú založené na
   tvojom egu, vieš prijímať spätnú väzbu od kolegov, klientov a používateľov.
   Máš ochotu povzniesť používateľov nad vlastné ego.

Výhodou:

 * Máš vyštudovanú vysokú školu so zameraním na výtvarné umenie, produktový
   dizajn alebo obdobný smer.
 * Vieš, čo je Figma, Sketch a máš s týmito nástrojmi skúsenosti.
 * Máš skúsenosť s tvorbou a údržbou dizajn systémov.

Čo budeš u nás robiť?
 * pracovať na projektoch, ktoré identifikujú a riešia problémy v rôznych
   odvetviach, na produktoch a službách, ktoré používajú milióny používateľov,
 * spolupracovať s antropológmi, idea makermi, copywritermi, front-end aj
   back-end developermi, produktovými manažérmi a aj s top manažmentom,
 * vytvárať nové a rozvíjať už existujúce koncepty, dizajn systémy,
 * a naučíme ťa robiť Chemex a obsluhovať Moccamaster.

Náš proces v skratke pre predstavu
V roku 2018 sme začali naplno využívať Figmu, najmä kvôli lepšej kolaborácii v
tíme.

Riadime sa double diamondom. Nový projekt začíname exploračnou fázou. Často teda
workshopujeme a stretávame sa s používateľmi, v spolupráci s klientom a na
základe zistení z “terénu” postupne definujeme princípy vizuality. To, čo sme
zistili počas prvej fázy, sa snažíme pretaviť do vizuálneho konceptu, ktorý v
druhej fáze prototypujeme a následne testujeme s používateľmi. Cez tieto fázy si
prechádzaš s celým tímom, teda určite budeš mať dosah aj na iné expertízy ako
len vizuál (product management, kód, UX, práca s dátami...)

Čo ti ponúkame
 * Plat minimálne 1 500€ mesačne v hrubom (túto hranicu nemôžeme zo zákona
   podliezť)
 * Ekvivalent super hrubej mzdy ak preferuješ fakturáciu pred TPP
 * Neobmedzená preplatená dovolenka a PNka
 * Hardvér, softvér, appky, konferencie a všetko čo potrebuješ k práci. Nemáme
   budgety a limity. Limitom je rozum, finančné zdravie LB* a stratégia.
 * Podiel na zisku firmy vyplácaný kvartálne podľa našich finančných výsledkov
 * U nás máš šancu tvoriť trvácny dizajn, ktorý pomôže ľuďom a urobí ich život
   jednoduchším
 * Máme office v centre Bratislavy, pri Hodžovom námestí
 * Priestor na rast – Každý piatok máme vyhradené 3 hodiny na Academy –
   platformu slúžiacu na vzdelávanie sa
 * Kolektív s dobrým srdiečkom – v poslednom období sme sa rozrástli na vyše 35
   ľudí a chceme rásť pomaly – toto je jedinečná príležitosť sa k nám pridať ;)
 * Denne si varíme filtrovanú speciality coffee cez Chemex, Moccamaster a máme
   aj espresso pre klasikov, ktorý preferujú rýchly prísun kofeínu :)
 * Veľmi sa tešíme do officu a na kolegov... no počas covid-19 sa vieme správať
   zodpovedne a pracovať aj remote :)

Kto je v tíme Lighting Beetle?
Sme najväčšie UX štúdio na Slovensku, ktoré nedávno oslávilo svoje 11.
narodeniny. Dnes pracujeme na projektoch, ktoré používajú milióny používateľov.
V našom tíme máme ľudí, ktorí sa venujú výskumu zákazníkov, testovaniu
použiteľnosti, prototypovaniu, vizuálnemu dizajnu a front-end developmentu.

Ako nás kontaktovať?
Pošli e-mail na jobs@lbstudio.sk s predmetom Senior vizuálny dizajnér, v ktorom
uvedieš:

 * Portfólio projektov
 * Tvoje skúsenosti s moderovaním workshopov alebo riadením tímov
 * Ďalšie skúsenosti a znalosti, ktoré sú relevantné pre prácu v našom tíme
 * Tvoje skúsenosti s Figmou, príp. Sketchom
 * Radi by sme vedeli,  či si už stvoril nejaký zložitejší vizuálny systém –
   dizajn manuál, styleguidu

P.S.: Tykáme si :)

Hľadáme senior vizuálneho dizajnéra

What is this guide for?
Launching a new product is extremely risky, 90% of startup fail. This guide a
summary of best practices combined with our 10+ years experience of bringing
successful new product to market. Following our 7 step process, you will
maximize your chances for success.

In this handbook
 * Complex process simply explained: No need to be an expert in product
   management to read this guide. We write in plain english what you should know
   about creating a new product.
 * 7 steps process: From your first meeting to the launch, we explain in 7 steps
   how to build your product for your customers. 
 * Recommended tools: For each step, you can find some of our favorite tools.

The process
 * Business goals
 * Problem exploration
 * Solution development
 * Business model definition
 * Solution validation
 * Build a minimum solution
 * Continuous build & measure & learn

Get the Product Discovery Guide First Name* Professional email* Which one best
describes you?* Entrepreneur (I am startup founder or employee) Corporate
innovator (I work at a bigger company) Corporate Leader (I am a leader at a
bigger company) Consultant (I work as a freelancer or in an agency) Academic (I
am a teacher or student) Other Handout type Validation handbook Experiment
toolbox Experiment card canvas Assumption mapper canvas Product discovery guide 
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Product Discovery Guide

Products don’t reach success out of sheer luck. Many think that all it takes is
a great idea and a talented team. It certainly helps having those, but the 
startup graveyard [https://www.failory.com/cemetery] is full of ideas by
talented teams that have failed. Surviving in a competitive market is tough when
only 7 out of 10 businesses won’t make it to their 10-year mark
[https://www.fundera.com/blog/what-percentage-of-small-businesses-fail].

A product represents the results of carefully constructed planning, which stands
on several pillars, such as vision, strategy and goals. While the vision is
abstract and driven by a great deal of uncertainty, goals are very precise and
tangible. Somewhere in-between these contrasting worlds lives product strategy.
The strategy outlines how to turn the vision into reality while focusing on
empowering teams to solve complex problems. It’s the cornerstone of team
autonomy, helping them determine what the real problems are and how to solve
them.

The Vision
Creating a product strategy requires having a solid product vision. The vision
describes what value the product intends to deliver to the customers in the 2-5
years horizon, thus giving us a direction to follow. Your strategy will then lay
out the right path to reach the vision, helping you decide where to dedicate
appropriate efforts.

It's best not to think of the project vision in terms of a utopian goal, or to
define it in the smallest details. It should be about a realistic long-term
intention that is still challenging to achieve.

A good example comes from Slack, the communication platform. Since the
beginning, their strategists have been aware that, in the future, email
communication will be gradually replaced by faster and more interactive forms of
communication; and the platform wants to make sure they are a part of that
future.

> “It is almost inevitable that centralized internal communication systems will
gradually replace email for most organizations over the next 10-20 years and we
should do what we can to accelerate the trend and own it.” – Stewart
Butterfield, CEO of Slack
Once the vision is defined, the strategy can be created. Beware that product
strategy is not a document you write down based on a business case and proceed
to strictly follow. It's a path towards the vision, usually consisting of 3
elements: focus, insights and action steps.

The Strategy
Focus
Not everything we do is equally important. Investing efforts in unnecessary
initiatives can turn out to be very costly in the end. In today's world, we are
surrounded by various possibilities and opportunities, and it's very easy to let
yourself go and commit to useless ones. That's why I believe that the basis of a
good product strategy is the ability to say NO.

> “Good strategy requires leaders who are willing and able to say no to a variety
of actions and interests. Strategy is at least as much about what an
organization does not do as it is about what it does.” – Richard Rumelt
If your company has gone through the struggle of not being able to choose its
battles, you probably have experienced at least one of these symptoms:

 * Too many critical initiatives;
 * Excessive reactivity (e.g. the need to react to every competitor);
 * Continuous generation of activities instead of achieving goals;
 * Focus efforts on non-essential low-impact initiatives.

So the big question is "How do you focus your efforts to move the needle?" 
Unfortunately, there is no clear answer. However, Marty Cagan of SVPG
[https://svpg.com/product-strategy-focus/] recommends limiting the number of
things your product team is working on at any given time. If you don’t have
these limits, work piles up at bottlenecks and you end up constantly switching
context. As a result, you get fewer things out the door.

When creating a yearly strategy, it’s usually useful to narrow down your focus
to:

 * Vertical market (e.g. financial services, manufacturing, telecommunications,
   etc.)
 * Specific customer type (e.g. B2C)
 * Geographical location (e.g. focus on local market)
 * Channel (e.g. digital channels)
 * Set of key results (e.g. invent an autonomous car)

You may choose a focus from the list, a combination of them, or just look for
something that makes sense in your context, potentially informed by your own
insights.

A good example is Tesla that operates in the automotive vertical market. In the
oversaturated car market, they decided to focus on sustainable forms of
transportation, which they transformed into the production of electric cars for
the mass market. This specialization has enabled them to produce the most unique
electric cars and gain a competitive advantage.

> “(...) Our goal is to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport by bringing
compelling mass market electric cars to market as soon as possible (…)” – Elon
Musk
Another example might be Google, the search engine, whose vision is to “Provide
the most relevant and reliable information available". For this reason, they
decided that it would be very important for them to focus on mastering the
connections and relationships between information on the web, which culminated
on their decision to build The Knowledge Graph. Currently, Google Search covers
over 90% of search queries and it's clear that the results are relevant and
reliable.

Insights
Market and business knowledge are necessary not only to decide where to focus
the efforts, but also for planning your tactics and action steps towards the
vision.

What data do I recommend looking at?

 * Quantitative reports: It can show you certain patterns in shopping behavior,
   e.g. that small customers shop more often in smaller volumes than large ones
   and you can adjust your behavior or sales strategy accordingly; or what would
   be a good product for up-sell with some particular service; and so on.
 * Qualitative reports: Useful to describe existing problems or reveal new
   opportunities. Popular techniques are customer surveys and interviews.
 * Technological news: On one hand, it can show you trends but on the other hand
   it can show you new possibilities or threats, e.g. making better
   recommendations with AI is definitely a new possibility, while not having an
   optimized cart for mobile devices is a threat.
 * Sectoral information: Another way to gather trends and guidance, but in your
   own section. For example, in the newspaper business, when you see the decline
   in newspaper sales and decline of newspaper subscriptions you probably
   wouldn’t invest in creating new printed media or newspapers.
 * Shared knowledge: Make use of publicly (not always free) available data from
   researchers or public institutions.

Unfortunately, again, there's no golden formula that would help us simply create
a solid product strategy from this data. But the basics is to use the available
data to orient ourselves and find one or two critical insights upon which we may
build the strategy.

Google Search illustrates this pillar quite well. On mobile devices, people are
able to both type and dictate, which led Google to discover that people not only
search for keywords but also for complex sentences. This realisation taught them
that a rise in complex searches requires them to be able to know the context of
indexed information.

To build a realistic future, all your decisions should be guided by data and
insights. Turning the checking of the data into a ritual or automatising its
extraction process can help you avoid gut-feeling decisions that steer your
product towards the wrong direction.

> “Good strategy … does not pop out of some ‘strategic management’ tool, matrix,
chart, triangle, or fill-in-the-blanks scheme. Instead, a talented leader
identifies the one or two critical issues in the situation – the pivot points
that can multiply the effectiveness of effort – and then focuses and
concentrates action and resources on them.” – Richard Rumelt
Action steps
When you have decided about your focus and said NO to all impactless initiatives
it’s time to prepare your action steps. These steps reflect your focus on
meaningful and measurable goals and are your yearly strategy.

Personally, I prefer creating a yearly strategy in the form of OKRs, but they
deserve a separate article. As an alternative, you may use a roadmap, but be
careful not to focus on product features, instead of issues that you try to
resolve over a period of time. A good roadmap should be able to answer the
following questions:

1. What do we need to resolve to move closer to our vision?
2. How will we know that we have succeeded or failed?

As I wrote in the introduction to this article, the strategy describes the way
of realizing the vision and its main purpose is to empower teams to solve
complex problems. This should be your ultimate intention.

If you're facing some troubles setting up your product strategy, we can help you 
make better strategic decisions [https://www.lbstudio.sk/approach].

Some more resources to help you on your journey to mastering product strategy:

 * How to write a product vision statement
   [https://www.productboard.com/blog/write-product-vision/] – Productboard
 * Guide: Set goals with OKRs
   [https://rework.withgoogle.com/guides/set-goals-with-okrs/steps/introduction/] 
    – Google
 * Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The difference and why it matters
   [https://www.amazon.com/Good-Strategy-Bad-difference-matters-ebook/dp/B005331U7Q/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=] 
    – Richard Rumelt

Product Strategy Is All About Saying No

What is this guide for?
Validation is the best way to make sure you're building something successful,
before actually building it. Save up month of work by discovering which ideas
are worth implementing

In this handbook
 * Simply explained concepts: No buzzwords, we explain why you should validate
   your ideas before implementing them in plain english.
 * Step-by-step process: In the handbook we are introducing the assumption
   mapper and the experiment cards canvas. We provide you with clear steps how
   to use them yourself.

Get the Validation Handbook First Name* Professional email* Which one best
describes you?* Entrepreneur (I am startup founder or employee) Corporate
innovator (I work at a bigger company) Corporate Leader (I am a leader at a
bigger company) Consultant (I work as a freelancer or in an agency) Academic (I
am a teacher or student) Other Handout type Validation handbook Experiment
toolbox Experiment card canvas Assumption mapper canvas We handle your personal
data gently and will only use it to send you updates about the content that you
request. You can unsubscribe or change preferences anytime. For details about
how we respect and protect your privacy, review our Personal data protection
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Validation Handbook

What is this canvas for?
The “Experiment Card” helps you frame your experiments and focus on what really
matters. It’s crucial to define the success criteria so that you can decide
whether or not to repeat, pivot, or implement.

Step-by-step process
 * Step 1: For the assumptions you previously selected with the team,
   individually complete the  experiment cards that you printed before hand.
   Tip: Check out the experiment toolbox (15 min)
 * Step 2: Present filled-in experiment cards and write down feedback on sticky
   notes (10 min).
 * Step 3: For each assumption, merge your individual work into one experiment.
   (15 min).
 * Step 4: Wrap-up by reviewing the next steps, roles and responsibilities. (10
   min).

Get the Experiment Card First Name* Professional email* Which one best describes
you?* Entrepreneur (I am startup founder or employee) Corporate innovator (I
work at a bigger company) Corporate Leader (I am a leader at a bigger company) 
Consultant (I work as a freelancer or in an agency) Academic (I am a teacher or
student) Other Handout type Validation handbook Experiment toolbox Experiment
card canvas Assumption mapper canvas We handle your personal data gently and
will only use it to send you updates about the content that you request. You can
unsubscribe or change preferences anytime. For details about how we respect and
protect your privacy, review our Personal data protection policy
[https://www.lbstudio.sk/gdpr.pdf]. 

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Experiment Card

What is this canvas for?
We created the assumption mapper canvas to help you frame you learning goal,
brainstorm assumptions and prioritize the riskiest ones.

Step-by-step process
Define your learning goal
 * Step 1: Individually write down the most important question or problem you
   need an answers for. Example: Will people use this feature? How should we
   build it? (5min).
 * Step 2: Share your questions and problems and build on top of them (15 min).
 * Step 3: Merge your questions into one or two learning goal. If you have many
   of them, prioritise the most important ones and keep the others for later (5
   min).

Map out assumptions
 * Step 1: Individually write down 2-4 key assumptions linked to your learning
   goal previously defined (10 min).
 * Step 2: Share them on the assumption mapper and build on each other’s
   assumptions (15 min).
 * Step 3: Rank each assumption from the riskiest to less risky one.  (15 min)
 * Step 4: Focus on the riskiest assumptions, and agree with the team which of
   one of them you will test first (10 min).

Get the Assumption Mapper First Name* Professional email* Which one best
describes you?* Entrepreneur (I am startup founder or employee) Corporate
innovator (I work at a bigger company) Corporate Leader (I am a leader at a
bigger company) Consultant (I work as a freelancer or in an agency) Academic (I
am a teacher or student) Other Handout type Validation handbook Experiment
toolbox Experiment card canvas Assumption mapper canvas We handle your personal
data gently and will only use it to send you updates about the content that you
request. You can unsubscribe or change preferences anytime. For details about
how we respect and protect your privacy, review our Personal data protection
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Assumption Mapper Canvas

What is this handbook for?
We’ve found that it is often hard to think about how something could be tested.
The experiment toolbox gives you 30 experiments to pick from.
For each experiment, there is a description as well as criterias to help you
decide if it is the one you need.

In this handbook.
 * 30 experiments ideas: We combined 30 experiments to help you validate your
   hypotheses. It goes from the traditional survey to less known techniques such
   as “Imposter Judo” or “Picnic on the graveyard”.
 * How to pick the best experiment: We created a system that helps you to
   determine what is the most suitable experiments depending on the stage you
   are in and what type of assumption you’re trying to validate.

Get the Experiment toolbox First Name* Professional email* Which one best
describes you?* Entrepreneur (I am startup founder or employee) Corporate
innovator (I work at a bigger company) Corporate Leader (I am a leader at a
bigger company) Consultant (I work as a freelancer or in an agency) Academic (I
am a teacher or student) Other Handout type Validation handbook Experiment
toolbox Experiment card canvas Assumption mapper canvas We handle your personal
data gently and will only use it to send you updates about the content that you
request. You can unsubscribe or change preferences anytime. For details about
how we respect and protect your privacy, review our Personal data protection
policy [https://www.lbstudio.sk/gdpr.pdf]. 

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Experiment Toolbox

The words digital transformation are being thrown around a lot at board
meetings. It is an umbrella term for the inner need of a corporation to be ready
for the digital future. And to boost efficiency through digitalisation,
resulting in cost savings. Both are correct. But many times, companies approach
digital transformation with a fuzzy framing.

When the need becomes evident, but the challenge appears insurmountable, the
board reaches out to big consulting firms for help with designing their digital
transformation initiatives. Good move. However, this process often lacks one of
the main factors for digital transformation success: internal capacities ready
to get aboard the train and take over the driver seat. And soon after, the
digital transformation cycles back to fuzziness and unclear purpose.

I have been part of several digital initiatives and I have discovered that
problems arise from the very start. When defining what they want to achieve,
companies keep hitting the wall of “what the hell do we really mean by digital
transformation?”. After years of struggling and learning in the field, I have
narrowed it down to:

> The goal of digital transformation is to provide business owners with proof that
digital operations have actual, measurable impact on the business; so that
business owners can scale their products to be operational in a digital
environment.
That is a mouthful, but it's very important to hit on two main points: measuring
the impact and scaling digital operations. Let’s dive a bit into these topics.

Measuring the impact of digital
Before a company fully embraces the transformation, they will employ a
complicated set of metrics for digital projects. At the board reporting meeting,
there will be a lot of discussion about page views, subscribers, NPS, App Store
rating or the number of users. These are what we call vanity metrics. They are
used to create an often false sense of achievement. At the end of the day, NPS
can be easily manipulated and may not reflect directly on business success. When
it comes down to measuring impact, simplicity is king.

I have learned that digital products should be measured through their direct and
proven impact on the core business metrics of the company. In a digital
environment, it's fairly straightforward to connect the dots between a specific
digital product effort and the company's objective. For example, a well setup
digital funnel and conversion goals could easily tell you how much money digital
is making.

Your digital products should not be driven by vanity metrics like NPS,
interaction speed, customer satisfaction or App Store rating. You should rather
focus on how many new customers were acquired digitally (conversion), how many
sales were driven through digital channels or how much service operation costs
have been reduced. The Head of Sales has quite precise expectations from every
sales representative, often measured in closed deals. It should be no different
for digital products, you should have precise expectations from all of your
digital initiatives, connecting it directly to the company's success.

We're currently working on an easy guide on how to setup optimal KPIs for
digital products. You can subscribe to our newsletter to be the first to know
when it's ready. In the meantime, our consultants can guide you through the
process, just hit us up at hello@lbstudio.sk and let's have a conversation.

Scaling digital operations
A company's digital maturity has a direct correlation with how well business
owners are capable of scaling their digital operations and building a team that
is empowered to deliver business-relevant results.

In the early stages of digital maturity, digital channels are often used just to
provide support for regular sales. Your digital portfolio may include a few
landing pages showcasing your services and direct contact to sales associates.
At this point, business owners will often focus on vanity metrics while grasping
at straws trying to prove how an increase in page views is helping achieve the
quarterly sales goal. Likely, the digital team does not feel motivated to push
their initiatives forward and lacks the vision or focus to do so.

A better approach is to set up the right expectations from your digital
products, while connecting it directly to your yearly or quarterly goal (e.g.
sell 100k worth of your service). This is better achieved through close
cooperation with top management. From that point, digital product teams will be
regarded as important across the company and focus on direct impact, as opposed
to superfluous metrics such as NPS. If they showcase what they can deliver, they
will feel empowered to leverage decisions in favor of achieving business goals,
as opposed to blindly fulfilling business requirements. When your team reaches
this point, you've taken the next step in your digital maturity and are able to
start scaling your digital operations.

Scaling is a tough process, best driven by product teams who are in direct
contact with customers. The recipe for success is all about working agile and
making decisions in the field, by balancing customer insights, technical
limitations and business goals. Focused and empowered teams will do everything
they can to get rid of useless work in order to achieve their goal.

The more successful these digital teams become, the more powerful they will be
in saying what new products and services should look like. Business owners will
see the results of the goals they have set up together with the teams and will
start thinking more digital. They will start asking themselves: How can I design
my product to utilise digital channels? Company products and services will start
scaling to digital and become better optimised for the end users.

Goal-centric cooperation
At LB*, we have believed for years that showcasing good product work in the
teams would drive digital transformation within the company. And we still
believe so. Unlike consulting firms, we earn our daily bread on real projects –
researching, designing, teaching and developing digital products.

But the impact of the digitalisation is limited without proper goals at the
managerial level. That is why we consult C-level management members to set up
the right environment for the digital transformation to rock. The cascading
goals model (such as OKRs) helps digital products to become real players in a
corporation and to take on a real business objective, not just a vanity metric.

Driving digital change inside an organisation goes beyond great digital
education, launching agile squads and changing mindsets. Setting the right goals
is one of the most important levers for transformation success. With the right
goals, it’s much easier to evaluate a digital product, praise it or hate it,
make those decisions about scaling, pivoting or dismissing it. Also, reporting
becomes much more transparent and useful.

If you have already started your digital transformation, go on delivering great
product work, staying agile and striving for great CX. Once you have proof that
your approach is successful, your next stop should be the C-level suite
explaining why the organisational goal setting should change.

Hint: OKRs are a great framework to start with.

Struggling with Digital Transformation? Goals might be the key

The waterfall design process is a traditional approach to launching digital
products that does not require much introduction. The entire cycle is divided
into separate sequential phases, starting with business and user requirements
gathering, moving through user research and ending up with designing, testing
and development.

The corporate world is deeply attached to the waterfall system, because it
mirrors the linearity of their internal processes. At first, a manager approves
a strict budget for the new product, then the design team will create the
experience, later the developers will take over and release a perfectly usable
product. Everyone is happy and success is achieved. Or at least that is the
ideal vision from management.

The only caveat is that every new project is built on top of a pile of
uncertainties.

The risk curve in the waterfall design processThe more you delay real contact
with customers, the bigger the pile becomes. To reduce the risk of an avalanche,
great product teams eliminate risks through iterations of research and testing.
However, only on rare occasions it is possible to estimate how many iterations
are needed to reach optimal results. The lack of proper estimation comes into
conflict with budgets and deadlines set at the early stages, making management
unhappy. Consequently, tensions get high, the release takes longer and you run
out of budget.

Designers love a problem to solve and the waterfall process is no different.
Multiple companies have borrowed concepts from agile development, beloved by
engineers, and have created agile design frameworks that have been blossoming in
the Design community. Google came up with Design Sprints, IDEO improved Design
Thinking, Startups embraced the Lean Startup.

We call our approach simply Lean UX.

The risk curve in the lean UX design processLean UX by LB*
At LB*, we break agile product design into small, self-contained chunks of work
with the help of story maps, a simplification of user journeys
[https://www.lbstudio.sk/blog/simple-user-stories-to-quickly-improve-your-designs/] 
with the focus on different features and use cases for each step of the journey.

Story map for the user journey of attending an eventIn the example above, from our case study about designing More app by HB Reavis
[https://www.lbstudio.sk/hbreavis], the chunks are smaller features the user
needs to interact with during their journey for attending an event: seeing
upcoming events, subscribing, paying ticket, etc. Another example from our
project of redesigning an online bookstore Martinus
[https://www.lbstudio.sk/martinus], these may represent individual subpages
ordered according to the journey of buying a book: homepage, catalogue, product
page, shopping cart and so on.

During two-week long sprints, a team of designers, engineers and business
stakeholders work on a set of these chunks. Each cycle looks like this:

In the first week, we hold a workshop to fine-tune the problem, we brainstorm
solutions and design a prototype. Some solutions are obvious and present low
risk, therefore not requiring much validation (e.g. login). Other solutions are
riskier and should be validated (e.g. are customers able to unlock an e-scooter
with their phone camera?). For each risky assumption, we create hypotheses to be
validated. 

In the second week, we validate hypotheses through clickable prototypes,
interviews, smoke testing or any suitable method. The results inform our design
iterations. At the end of the second week, we may have iterated the design
dozens of times. Our research, testing and validation happens in guerilla mode 一
we insert ourselves where members of our audience could be and approach them in
person (e.g. a bookstore for Martinus, a hospital for Dôvera or a retail store
for Orange). Alternatively, we may rely on online tools. There is also room for
traditional user testing methods in the project, but speed and flexibility are
the most important features in sprints.

Quantity brings multiple benefits
In the Lean methodology, we prefer quantity over quality. A higher amount of
quick tests gives us better results than a lower amount of highly precise tests.
It also allows us to be more flexible and make small changes in-between sessions
and see the results right away. The number of small iterations boosts the output
quality and lowers the risk of delays. 

Lean UX shows its true power when we combine lean design and agile development.
Both can run in almost parallel flows that feed into each other. Low risk small
features can be coded from the get-go and as soon as riskier features are
designed and validated, it can be included in the development backlog for the
following cycle.

Traditional Waterfall design processLean UX + Agile DevelopmentIf you create a
solid story map, based on real user journeys, plan the work in small chunks and
work together as an agile lean team, just within a few weeks you can deliver a
product that would otherwise take months or years to be released in the
waterfall process. The product may be smaller in scope at first, but it will
have lower risk, it will hit the market first and you will get to improve
continuously while already having customers and real feedback.

Is Lean suitable for you?
We hope that by now you can grasp the benefits of the Lean methodology, but
before you try something similar in your company, you should ask yourself a few
questions: 

1. How deeply are you and your colleagues willing to cooperate on a project?
Lean UX is a deeply collaborative activity, which requires participation of a
multidisciplinary team. Designers, analysts, developers and also management have
to be able to meet regularly, communicate and co-create.

2. Are you willing to give up documentation?
In the Lean methodology, direct communication takes precedence over
documentation. That’s why an entire team of designers and developers sits
together in our office, so they can communicate directly any time someone
discovers a problem or has suggestions for improvement. Communicating through
outputs and documentation is not only inefficient, but usually the biggest
source of misunderstandings.

3. Are you willing to accept flexible specifications?
Lean means avoiding excessive planning and instead resetting the direction of
the project continuously. Design is one big learning process, which impacts the
users, the product, technologies and even the business itself.

4. Do you spend time to further improve products after its release?
A release does not end the design process, but quite the opposite. The sooner
the product is out, the sooner you can gather real customer feedback and make
educated improvements. Design does not last a month, or a year, but the entire
product lifecycle.

Corporations are changing
Companies that can deliver products fast are able to better react to market
changes. Slowly, corporations are starting to realise that long development
cycles are synonymous to reduced growth and potential loss of market share to
faster and more innovative companies. 

Changing an entire company to working agile overnight is impossible. If you are
interested in embracing a risk-free product development culture, you have a long
road ahead of you, but we can help you take baby steps along the way.

Many companies like Dôvera and Orange have embarked on this journey with us and
are already delivering customer-centric products faster, such as a web app
helping to subdue diabetes [https://www.lbstudio.sk/dovera] and a new online
offer of TV packages [https://www.lbstudio.sk/orange].

Are you ready to go down this path with us and start creating better products
and services faster? We can set up a cooperation on a small pilot project. 
Let's
talk [https://www.lbstudio.sk/contact].

This article was co-created by: Juraj Blichár (project management), Walter Lima
 & Stanislav Rykalský (UX design), Peter Škrovan (graphic design), Michal Blažej
(partner and director)

Lean UX – Our Recipe for Agile Design

I am writing this and working from home as are my Beetle colleagues. As is the
majority of Slovakia and most people across the globe. Social distancing is the
norm right now and despite it being proven effective to slow down the spread of
COVID-19, it still has large implications in the economy and people's
well-being.

A study from 2015 [https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/05/ce-corner-isolation] 
points out that social isolation presents health risks similar to those of
obesity, smoking and physical inactivity. Although such risks are more prominent
when exposed to longer periods of social isolation — which we hope will not be
the case —  keeping yourself close to others can provide you with short and long
term benefits. Human contact combats stress and anxiety by triggering the
release of a "cocktail" of neurotransmitters and, like a vaccine
[https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/321019#Face-to-face-contact-is-like-a-vaccine]
, they protect you now, in the present, and well into the future.

Sharing a physical space allows people to not only shower themselves with
oxytocin through social interactions, but it also provides simple means for
working as a team. Another study shows there is a direct connection between
teamwork and well-being
[https://research.aston.ac.uk/en/studentTheses/teamwork-and-well-being]. The
perception of working as a team brings people higher levels of well-being, job
satisfaction and organisational commitment, as opposed to those that work alone
or in quasi teams. The lack of an office space should not stop you from reaping
all these benefits. Technology is here to provide us with some decent
alternatives. 

For us, LB* is not just a company, it's our second home. On a regular basis, you
would find people hanging out at the office or each other's houses well past
working hours or during the weekend. Space and time are not boundaries for
Beetles.

Celebrations, BBQs but also vacations, Beetles spend a lot of their free time
togetherWe don't want to lose the essence of our company during this challenging
time and although the team has such close relationships, it's necessary to
create a structure that will constantly kindle the fire. That's where our Spirit
guardians come in. This is a team of individuals with a shared goal of keeping
spirits high with years of knowledge about what works for us and what doesn't.
And based on that, here are some of our tips on how to help your team stay
strong, motivated and have some fun.

1. Incorporate fun & relaxing rituals into teams’ routine
There's a reason why agile companies incorporate rituals into their way of
working. The certainty and regularity keeps people motivated and aligned towards
a common goal. During regular times, we run a handful of rituals every sprint –
our UX designer Petra describes them well in her blogpost about Lean UX rituals
[https://www.lbstudio.sk/blog/lean-ux-rituals-an-invaluable-tool-for-agile-design-teams/]
. And now it is more important than ever to keep people moving forward and
light-hearted.

Each team should follow a routine that is as similar to their regular routine as
possible. Not being physically in the same room should not have any influence
over it. It's business as usual, with a bit of extra fun added to the mix. Here
is how a week looks like for one of our teams.

A typical weekly schedule for one of our Agile teamsAt LB*, some agile squads
have a morning coffee that members attend every day. Look at it as a standup,
but with coffee and breakfast. Even internal teams like finance or marketing,
who don't always follow agile processes, incorporated them immediately. It is
also a chance for you to capture ridiculous pictures you can use to blackmail
your colleagues later. Throughout the day, teams have sparring sessions and
other ad-hoc meetings just as regular days. To make it easier, you can have a
virtual room that simply mimics any physical space that you already have at your
office, for example we have a lunch room and a smoking terrace. One of the
advantages of working online is that you will never again run out of meeting
rooms!

2. Promote healthy boundaries of working hours
Taking a home office used to be considered a joke:

At first, working 100% of the time from home raised fears of us being able to
still work agile and honour our commitments. As a data-driven company, we not
only track all the products we launch, but we also track everything we do.
During our first week of quarantine, it was obvious that our productivity had
taken a hit. Our system recorded a drop of around 10% in productivity, compared
to the average of the 6 previous weeks.

That did not last long, however. From the second week, we started to observe the
completely opposite effect. People were working more than usual. As researchers,
we investigated deeper and found out that working from home eliminated some of
the boundaries we previously had. For example, there was no more clear start and
end of the workday, or lunch time tends to be shorter since people did not waste
time going to restaurants anymore. Although this might be the ultimate
capitalist dream for some companies, for us it triggers the Spirit guardians to
encourage people to adopt a stronger routine and focus more on their well-being.

If you don't already track your team's productivity with tools such as Toggl
[https://toggl.com/] or Harvest
[/p/6e056b24-4306-4cf7-82a3-1615fcf85fad/harvestapp.com], consider finding a way
to investigate if they are achieving a good balance of work and life. Actively
encourage them to follow a routine, take breaks and only plan for the sprint as
they would usually do while working at the office.

3. Get everyone together at least once a week
Smaller teams with strong rituals is the way to go to stay productive and
motivated. But what about the company culture? When the same group of people
meet each other over and over, the bigger sense of belonging and culture starts
to fall through the cracks.

Just as it would happen organically at an office situation, it's important that
people who don't work together often have a chance to meet and interact for a
while. For us, that means a weekly company-wide standup, plus some learning and
fun activities.

>  View this post on Instagram
[https://www.instagram.com/p/B-XuB55nqRj/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading] 
  1-2-3 CLAP! 👏🏻 This is how we always finish our Monday morning standup. And
how did your week start off? Are you keeping your team rituals even under
current circumstances? #agile #rituals #remote #standup #clap #123clap
#teamspirit #tradition
[https://www.instagram.com/p/B-XuB55nqRj/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading]

A post shared by LB*
[https://www.instagram.com/lightingbeetle/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading] 
(@lightingbeetle) on Mar 30, 2020 at 1:08pm PDT


Our week starts with a Monday standup where each team presents what they are
doing, for up to 3 minutes. There is also a company status check and we announce
any news or activities planned for the week.

Friday afternoon is reserved for growth and team bonding. Our regular schedule
would include weekly lectures and workshops with everyone in the same room. This
tradition survives, but instead of a physical room and a whiteboard, we use Zoom
and Figma.

On top of that, to make up for the lack of day-to-day fun interactions, we run
activities that push people to meet strangers. We split the whole team into
groups of up to 8 people and they meet in a virtual room without any prior
knowledge of who would be in the same room. While in the room, they have a 
Figma
playground [https://bit.ly/Lighting_Beetle_Figma_Fun] where they can play some
games that encourage them to bond.

40 people having fun drawing how their previous quarter wasRegardless of which
activities you decide to do, make sure that you are building on the company
culture and involving everyone. For us, Growth and Empathy are our company
values, so we focus on learning and bonding activities. For you, it may be
something else, but don't let physical limitations stop you from making it
regular and for the whole team. Fixed time slots for your activities foster a
sentiment of certainty that helps reduce anxiety and give people something to
look forward to.

4. Keep the activities coming
People get bored and distracted easily. At home, they have plenty of sassy
evildoers like kids, dogs and Netflix, all fighting for their attention. Keeping
things always the same leads people to look for other things to do. You gotta
keep people on their toes and do a wide range of different events and
activities. Here are a few examples of activities we have hosted so far:


 * Virtual birthday celebrations
 * Shared online kitchen for cooking and eating together
 * Drawing games and online board games
 * Thematic team building party with DJs
 * Fun quizzes with trivia about team members
 * Meet the strangers speed-dating with random colleagues
   

Although you can dedicate a team to creating and managing the activities, let
everyone propose ideas and build a sense of ownership. Creating a public backlog
has proven very effective for us – currently, there are ideas like: make your
own board game night, social distanced movie night and LB* quiz night.

For publicizing the events and getting many people to attend, you can make a
public schedule to let everyone know what is coming and on top of that you can
let your wild side take over when teasing people right before the event happens.

Bubo eating his pancakes, while others cannot help but be jealous5. Leave no
soldier behind
It's common to disregard introverts when creating social activities. The mindset
often is that introverts don't need social interaction, thus leading people to
craft events and activities that mostly benefit those with extroversion
personality traits. However, as we already discussed at the beginning, poor
social interaction has a direct impact on short and long-term health risks. 

The assumption that introverts don't need social interaction is unfounded. They 
are the happiest when they are in contact with other people but on their own
terms [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4614904/]. The two main
factors that influence the relationship of introversion and happiness are the
quality of the interaction and the capability of dictating how these
interactions should happen. 

For example, if you are hosting an event for the whole company, instead of
forcing people to ask questions vocally in front of everyone, give them the
option to submit anonymous questions via Sli.do [https://www.sli.do/]; allow
them to react non-verbally. Or let's say you plan a digital party for the whole
team, in that case you can create a separate room for those who wish to play
some games instead of talking, drinking and dancing. Finally, maybe you don't
always need to have events for the whole team, you can have smaller activities
that will have a higher quality of social interaction, e.g. a circle of trust
where people can share their feelings without judgement or pressure.

Next time you brainstorm and prepare activities to keep your team in high
spirits, try to do a quick assessment of which personality traits you have in
your team and make sure that you will cater for both extroversion and
introversion.

6. Get creative
Finally, don't get constrained by time and space. People can come up with crazy
ideas and have loads of fun. Designers thrive when they have limitations and
well-defined challenges, so this is the perfect time to let your creative juices
flow.

There's already a lot of creativity going around out there, for example playing
checkers [https://www.notion.so/Checkers-31bdae1f416945f59a582786919766eb], 
pictionary
[https://www.notion.so/Figma-Pictionary-bbfa742fb12b4e12a0d8bf3c9b58d9d2], and
15-second animals
[https://www.notion.so/15-second-animal-995ea812620d41e5bde42259240436f9] on
Figma.

What are you doing to keep your team in high spirits? Share some ideas with us!
We'd love to try it out on our team too.

If you don't know where to start, you can try our Figma playground
[https://bit.ly/Lighting_Beetle_Figma_Fun] with a few games that worked for us
perfectly:

Stay safe and have some fun!

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