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 pre 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, ktorí 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

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

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: The OKR framework (Objective - Key results)
[https://www.perdoo.com/the-ultimate-okr-guide/] 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!

Keeping Team Sanity in the Times of Remote Work

Stretli ste sa pri práci na projekte s cudzím pojmom, ktorému ste nerozumeli?
Alebo kolegovia nerozumejú výrazom, ktoré používate? V tomto slovníku nájdete
vhodné preklady a definície, ktoré vám pomôžu zlepšiť vzájomné porozumenie v
tíme. Článok si môžete pridať do záložiek, výrazy postupne pridávame.

agile
agilita, agilne, agilný
Časovo ohraničený, iteratívny prístup k dodávaniu produktu, ktorý sa priebežne
buduje od začiatku projektu na rozdiel od snahy dodať všetko naraz na jeho
konci. Pracovať agilne znamená rýchlym, časovo ohraničeným spôsobom urobiť tak,
aby činnosť zostala v rozsahu projektu, aby sa predišlo nepotrebnej námahe a
závislostiam.

bounce rate
miera odchodov
Percento návštevníkov, ktorí sa navigujú z webu preč ihneď po pozretí len jednej
stránky.

build-measure-learn
postav – zmeraj – pouč sa
Kroky lean cyklu podľa Erica Riesa. Ten pozostáva z týchto troch krokov, ktoré
je nutné dodržiavať pre vytvorenie úspešného produktu, služby alebo
funkcionality.

customer centric
prozákaznícky
Rozhodnutie alebo krok, pri ktorých sa v prvom rade myslí na zákazníka.
Prozákaznícka spoločnosť je tá, ktorá robí rozhodnutia so zreteľom na prvom
mieste na potreby zákazníka a až potom na všetko ostatné.

customer experience
zákaznícky zážitok
Súbor všetkých interakcií, ktoré zákazník zažíva so spoločnosťou, značkou alebo
produktom.

customer journey
zákaznícka cesta
Komplexný súhrn skúseností, cez ktoré zákazník prechádza, keď interaguje s
firmou, značkou, produktom alebo službou. Môže znamenať aj „artefakt“, ktorý
túto komplexnú skúsenosť mapuje.

design thinking
dizajnové myslenie
Proces kreatívneho riešenia problémov, pri ktorom sa snažíme pochopiť
používateľa, rozporovať predpoklady a redefinovať problémy tak, aby
identifikovali alternatívne stratégie a riešenia.

design sprint
dizajn šprint
Týždňový intenzívny workshop, na ktorom všetky zúčastnené strany (stakeholderi)
spolupracujú na tom, aby validovali, či nápad realizovať alebo nie.

design system
dizajn systém
Jednotný zdroj pravdy, ktorý obsahuje všetky elementy, ktoré tím používa pri
dizajnovaní a vyvíjaní produktu.

high fidelity, hi-fi
vysoká detailnosť, vysokodetailný
Väčšinou v súvislosti s wireframom alebo prototypom. Znamená to, že majú vysokú
mieru presnosti a vernosti, takže tiež vyžadujú detailnú spätnú väzbu.

lean
lean (prístup, manažment...)
Metodika, pri ktorej sa sústreďujeme na dodanie väčšej hodnoty a zmenšenie
odpadu. V kontexte produktov alebo služieb znamená výrobu len najmenšej nutnej
robustnosti produktu tak, aby používateľovi alebo biznisu dodala pridanú hodnotu
čo najskôr. Ak je niečo lean, znamená to, že to funguje, aj keď možno nie
perfektne.

lean UX
lean cyklus
Proces, ktorý pomenoval Eric Ries. Cyklus pozostáva z troch krokov, ktoré je
nutné dodržiavať pre vytvorenie úspešného produktu, služby alebo funkcionality.
Pozri aj build-measure-learn.

low fidelity, lo-fi
nízka detailnosť, nízkodetailný, hrubý
Väčšinou v súvislosti s wireframom alebo prototypom. Znamená to, že majú nízku
mieru presnosti a vernosti, takže tiež spätná väzba na ne tiež nemusí byť
detailná.

MVP, minimum viable product
minimálny životaschopný produkt
Výraz úzko prepojený s lean metodikou. MVP je produkt s najnižším možným počtom
funkcionalít na to, aby uspokojil prvých zákazníkov (ani o jednu viac). Zároveň
je zdrojom tak spätnej väzby pre budúci vývoj produktu.

outcome
výsledok
Hodnota, ktorá výsledkom našej práce. Lean prístupokm sa snažíme zmaximalizovať
výsledky (tj. hodnotu, ktorú sme vytvorili pre používateľov) a zároveň
minimalizovať množstvo jednotlivých výstupov.

output
výstup
Konkrétne výsledky práce, hmatateľné či jasne pomenovateľné. Dokumenty, dizajny,
wireframy...

planning
plánovanie
Jeden z rituálov agilného systému práce. Na začiatku šprintu sa stanoví práca,
ktorú počas šprintu chceme urobiť, rozplánuje sa na menšie úlohy a definuje sa
cieľ šprintu.

prototype
prototyp
Simulácia alebo vzorka produktu, ktorú používame na získavanie spätnej väzby.
Môže ísť napr. o prelinkovaný (interaktívny) wireframe, funkčnú webstránku alebo
len papierové skice.

research
výskum
(Používateľský) výskum je exploratívna alebo investigatívna činnosť, ktorou sa
snažíme pochopiť používateľov a ich potreby, aby sme mohli vytvárať lepšie
produkty a služby.

roadmap
plán rozvoja
Rozobranie funkcionalít alebo používateľských príbehov, naplánované na časovú
os. Umožňuje produktovému vlastníkovi priorizovať (v čase) funkcionality od
najkľúčovejších po menej dôležité. Slúži aj ako pomôcka pre pochopenie
budúcnosti produktu.

standup
standup
Krátke denné stretnutie, väčšinou pred prácou, kde si členovia tímu povedia, ako
pokročili deň predtým a čo plánujú mať hotové na konci dňa (dnes).

usability
použiteľnosť
Kvalitatívny parameter toho, aké ľahké je používať produkt či službu.

user experience
používateľská skúsenosť
Súbor všetkých aspektov toho, ako koncový používateľ interaguje s firmou, jej
službami a produktami.

user story
používateľský príbeh
Veta alebo text, ktorý zachytáva používateľskú potrebu tak, aby komunikoval aj
výsledky spojené s funkcionalitami produktu. Napr.: projektový manažér
(používateľ): Potrebujem sledovať odpracovaný čas (funckionalita), aby sa
projekt udržal v rozpočte (výsledok).

wireframe
wireframe
Dvojrozmerná ilustrácia používateľského rozhrania, ktorá sa konkrétne zameriava
na rozmiestnenie a priorizáciu obsahu, dostupné funkcionality a zamýšľané
správanie.

Na príprave slovníka sa podieľajú UX writeri Michal Zaričňak, Nina Poláková a
Petra Toszegi.

LB* slovník odborných výrazov z UX

In this article, we show you both – the spotlights and the backstage of our
work. You’ll see how LB*, a 40-member service design studio specialized in UX
research [https://www.lbstudio.sk/], managed to transform into a remote agency
in just a week due to the coronavirus outbreak. All projects running smooth, all
teams working comfy from the safety of their homes.

Our UX designer Petra describes the tools and process we utilized to keep the
value we deliver to our customers and our marketing manager Dominika follows the
radical change to our company setup while keeping the employees motivated and
efficient. We hope this diary provides you with a positive perspective for the
upcoming future and inspires you in how to cope with the pandemic.

Day Zero
Dominika: The Outbreak
It wasn’t really a scary atmosphere here in central Europe when most of our
40-member studio stayed at home for the first time. It was Friday March 13th and
it was freshly considered a pandemic back then. Hence, while seeing the rest of
the leads in person for the last time, we decided to strongly support work from
home in the upcoming week and see what the situation is about to bring.

A few colleagues had remained isolated in the previous days and we were
monitoring the situation rapidly changing in other countries. It was about time
to lead by example. We asked Beetles to utilize remote work extensively, to
replace face-to-face meetings by video calls and we put together our best
practice for teleconferencing
[https://www.lbstudio.sk/blog/a-ux-designers-guide-to-make-conference-calls-great-again/]
. Little did we know it was only a beginning.

Petra: Onboarding
When our business developer Erik approached us with this new project for the
first time, it aroused some level of curiosity and expectations in me – this
time even more intense than usual. “The deal is to do usability testing for two
customer journeys. However, during this Covid-19 situation, the challenge is to
set up remote testing…”

After some time of discussing all the points of view, we decided to take a step
into the unknown. Before we started, we organized a remote call with the client
to learn more about the context of the testing. We asked for their expectations,
discussed some fears and hopes and let them show us the concept. Here, the first
good sign appeared: we were able to clearly see someone clicking through the
prototype by sharing the screen, and hearing them comment on the process at the
same time. Our hope was rising.

Day One
Dominika: Collaboration
It’s Monday and the situation has changed rapidly over the weekend. Schools were
closed, many people stayed in voluntary quarantine and isolation, businesses
started looking for the sweet spot between letting the employees at home and
keeping the revenues.

Although we sense the chaos rising around, the only difference for our
multidisciplinary teams combined with clients’ specialists is they don’t
collaborate in person but transform their sparring and agile rituals
[https://www.lbstudio.sk/blog/lean-ux-rituals-an-invaluable-tool-for-agile-design-teams/] 
to the virtual space. We also managed to do our company-wide standup completely
remotely which proved that even large meetings or workshops can work. That’s
good news and we even managed to remain our 1-2-3-CLAP ritual!

>  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


Petra: Screener & Recruiting
As a next step, it was the time to clearly set who the users were and what kind
of respondents we would need for testing the website. For this purpose, we
prepared the screener – an understandable user specification. Practically this
meant writing down several different attributes (such as age, computer literacy
or the level of knowledge / experience in a particular area) that we wanted our
respondents to meet at some levels. Then, by creating a simple table we split
these to six unique combinations and out of that we created six personal
specifications.

We added a few basic information about the dates and estimated durations of the
testings and sent this document to our recruitment agency NMS
[https://www.nms-mr.com/]. They are highly experienced in recruiting respondents
remotely, so the next day we already had six slots scheduled in our calendars.

Day Two
Dominika: Workspace
Everyone is working from home by now and we understood we wouldn’t be able to
predict how long this setup would take. Some Beetles raised struggles with their
workspace and work dynamics while isolated with other family members. So our
head of HR and LB* partner Marek solved this design challenge just like any
other – with his head cool.

He became an official LB* delivery guy and took orders of what people needed
from LB* office. And it could be absolutely anything, from displays and devices
to plants and office utensils – furniture including. Someone even asked for the
bag of coffee grains which would otherwise expire. Making sure everyone’s
working in a comfortable environment made us confident we could keep the pace.

Petra: Scenario & Settings
We identified the key user tasks on the website we were about to test. According
to that, we created a testing scenario that reflected the main use cases focused
on specified goals. We broke these goals into smaller tasks with instructions.

Besides that, we made a simple step-by-step guide for the participants with
screenshots of how to connect to the testing. We included the link for the
meeting room alongside with the instructions for microphone and camera setting.
We sent this to our respondents in advance, so that they could set everything
beforehand.

Day three
Dominika: LB* spirit
Although we see a lot of teammates during virtual meetings, we already miss
those small talks in the alley. Knowing people will be staying at their homes in
the evenings, I didn’t hesitate and scheduled a remote BYOB party for tonight
already two days ago. However, there are also these nice little attempts
boosting the spirit, e.g. a shared link to a “virtual lunchroom” or posting a
picture of the day in a slack thread – once showing your workspace, the next day
comparing the way we prepare coffee at home.

Agile ceremonies help a lot. We didn’t really need to learn new rituals than
those we already used, but even the internal teams like finance, sales or
marketing incorporated them into their daily routine. We utilize them to both
keep our work effective and focused and take care of our mental health. You
know, sharing is caring.

Petra: Pilot testing
In LB*, we push this learning principle of build–measure–learn, the magic lean
UX formula
[https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/a-simple-introduction-to-lean-ux]
. Also in the case of our testing, we wanted to be sure everything goes right,
so we conducted a pilot remote testing with one of our colleagues. Thanks to
this, we had a chance to identify the weak spots and to revise each and every
detail. The more important your remote activity is, the more we recommend trying
it out prior to the event.

Day Four
Dominika: Tensions
It may seem that transforming into a distributed company is easy as ABC. Well,
as we were shown by some of our clients it’s not always this comfortable. First,
we mostly work with big national companies with hundreds or even thousands of
employees. And second, take into consideration that there are new restrictions
by the government announced every day.

The best we could do for them at the situation was assuring the product owners,
investors and stakeholders we are ready and able to deliver our commitments by
100% in expected deadlines and quality. All the preparations done in previous
days helped us gain the confidence and enabled us to share the best practices we
already learned with our clients.

Petra: UX testing
So, here we are. Two UX designers, one as a facilitator and one as an observer /
note-taker, and a respondent in one call. There was also an open door for the
client if he wanted to check on how we were doing.

The structure of the testing was more or less the same with all the respondents:
We started with the introduction of LB* and our mission, then we shortly went
through the agenda, asked the respondent for a GDPR permission. Then we went
ahead with a couple of briefing questions, tasks and overall feedback.

While one of us was asking the participant to complete the tasks from the
scenario, the other one was observing, measuring the time and writing the
detailed notes into the spreadsheet. After each testing, we went through the
notes again and helped each other to complete them in case we missed something.

Then, for each respondent we wrote a short summary, which was helpful later on,
while creating the report. We highly recommend doing this kind of debrief right
after each participant while it is fresh in your minds, otherwise it is easy to
forget important data.

Eventually, we ended up with a spreadsheet table stuffed with lots of insights.

Day Five
Dominika: Perspective
Now when the process runs smoothly and the team seems motivated, what more can
we do? Well, wait for how the situation turns out. Or wake up our brains and
think of ways we could be helpful. For the business, for the community, for the
society.

We had this superquick brainstorming on what we can offer in the times of a
pandemic and also individuals joined different initiatives. Life goes on and
searching for design challenges that we can impact is now even more important
than ever before. So we keep our workshops, we keep doing our weekly LB* Academy
and believe in the best – to soon be able to make the world a better place while
being able to sit in the same room with the people we love working with.

>  View this post on Instagram
[https://www.instagram.com/p/B96kjIanTb3/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading] 
  Remote works! Even for a workshop for 30 attendees collaborating on 5 group
assignments. What tools work for you? We’ve been using @figmadesign for over 2
years now so the collaboration remains pretty easy. For calls, we are satisfied
with Hangouts Meet by @google as we can easily send out invitations via
calendar
events. Just look at Albert sharing his screen via #googlehangout during our
LB*
Academy on how to set up #OKRs, watching us dividing into group assignments in
#figma 🤩 Pure satisfaction! #remotework #collaboration #conferencecalls
#confcalls #videocalls #userexperience #UX #designstudio #LBstudio #academy
#LBacademy #satisfyingvideos
[https://www.instagram.com/p/B96kjIanTb3/?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 19, 2020 at 5:30am PDT


Petra: Report
Triumphantly, we finished all the calls! Now, only the last part of this remote
project is ahead of us: preparing a report. In translation: having a long, long
day processing the data, taking screenshots & gifs from video sessions and
suggesting solutions. We created a nice presentation in Google Slides which we
sent alongside with the video recordings and other documents as an attachment.
Our work here is done!

To wrap it all up, here are some overall insights and lessons learned:
1. You can do it all with the “holy trinity” of remote testing
We found these three tools good enough for us to have solid outcomes:


 * Google Drive [https://www.google.com/drive/] (Docs & Sheets) as an easy
   collaborative tool for creating materials such as the guide, screener,
   scenario or notes.
 * Google Hangouts Meet [https://meet.google.com/] for the quality remote calls.
   It is a stable tool, where the participants are able to easily share their
   screens.
 * Quicktime Player with Soundflower open source extension to record both audio
   from our microphone and from the respondent.

2. Take advantage of wide scope of respondents and the higher comfort
Even though we find in-person testing very effective, the advantage of doing it
remotely is that we can test almost anyone, from all around the country or even
the world. It doesn't matter how far away they are. Thanks, dear Internet. Also,
it takes much less time / effort spent than inviting the respondents to our
office.

What also surprised us in a good way, was that while remote testing, our
participants were less distracted by us taking notes. Also, it was easier to
clearly see what was going on on their screens without looking from behind their
back. People were much more relaxed and confident in their own living rooms,
kitchens or even beds.

3. Beware the careless mistakes and take breaks
One big lesson we have learned in this project is to have enough rest. As simple
as that. Especially these days while working from home, it is easy to forget to
stop working. Make sure you have solid breaks when you put the work away and do
something different. When we underestimated this and had two testings in a row,
it was really hard for us to focus.

Also, we recommend creating a checklist. For instance, it happened to us that we
forgot to start recording the session or to open a scenario document and let the
respondent wait. With a simple to-do list you can quickly check if you are all
set.

And the last but not least is: remote is possible. Of course, it can happen that
some connection issues occur, but don't panic. If anything goes wrong, there is
always a way to fix it.

We encourage you to use this time of isolation wisely and to let the new skills
and experience grow. If we, as LB*, can help you in any way, let us know. Or
check our blog to find relevant content. It’s all based on our experience with
lots of practical tips & tricks. And if you have your own proven advice on how
to work remotely, do not hesitate to share your learnings. We are in this
together! ✊🏻

Diary of a Virtual Design Studio: This Is How We Switched to a 100% Remote Company in One Week

Most of our design work is highly collaborative and agile rituals such as
standup, demo or planning
[https://www.lbstudio.sk/blog/lean-ux-rituals-an-invaluable-tool-for-agile-design-teams/] 
are one of the keys to our success. We do our best to keep them under any
circumstances so we put together a few rules to improve teleconference
experience for everyone attending. Doesn’t matter whether you are the organiser
or not, suggest the rules to the attendees and embrace them during your calls.

1. Connection
Most problems occur because of a poor connection, so make sure your device is
connected to a solid and reliable network. If it is poor, turn off your camera
and use voice only.

2. Sound
Use headphones if possible, speakers cause echoes. Also, sound is usually better
from headphones than from a computer.

3. Microphone
Turn off your mic when you are not speaking to avoid background noises. Only
turn it on when it’s your turn to speak or when it is absolutely necessary to
interrupt.

4. Facilitation
For meetings without a facilitator, use your facilitation skills and offer
yourself to moderate the discussion (e.g. large number of attendees, Q&A session
etc.)

5. Discussion
Have attendees ask questions in the chat so the discussion can be moderated. If
you expect a lot of attendees (15+) on your call and the chat might be crowded,
consider using Sli.do so the questions don’t get lost in a thread.

6. Video
If video or screen sharing doesn’t cause problems with connection, use it. It
can improve the effectiveness of the meeting.

7. Screen sharing
When sharing the screen, don’t forget to have all your notifications turned off
(so the Toggl reminder doesn’t pop up every 2 minutes).

8. Agenda
Stick to the agenda, timebox the activities and by the end of the call, make
sure attendees know what their tasks and actionable steps are.

9. Notes
Best way to engage everyone is making them do something useful. What that may be
during a group video call? Note taking. It will help the attendees remember
their tasks and ot also keeps their mind focused on the topic.

10. Appearance
Dress up like you usually do for work and sit up properly. This will not only
help you maintain your dignity but also strengthen the focus of you and other
attendees.

Have another great advice we should include? Let us know at 
marketing@lbstudio.sk

A designer's guide to make conference calls great again

Can you imagine a morning without a mug of freshly brewed, amazingly fragrant
coffee? Me neither. We all have these little things that make our days go the
way we enjoy them. In his book, The Story of Philosophy, Will Durant says:

> “We are what we repeatedly do.”
And that is the kind of thought that fits us in LB* perfectly.

Why we love rituals
In our work, change is constant and we need to be flexible. In particular
because we consider ourselves lean. There is no such thing as a stereotype for
us. However, it is very easy to forget and to turn off the road, even though we
have a clear vision of where we are heading with a project. That is why we need
our rituals – a set of regular activities that help our teams stay on track and
focus on the right priorities.

Here is a list of some of those we use and love the most:

0. Project kick-off and onboarding
Each project has its own unique challenges and it is more than important to
define them correctly. The project kick-off is the place where this can be
found. It is the first meeting of a full team, where we build that all-important
shared understanding of our goals and potential challenges amongst team members. 

Before we start doing anything, we all need to understand why the project even
makes sense. We define our roles and responsibilities and prepare a high-level
work plan to transform our wishes into goals.

By the end of the meeting, we ideally should have the information about why the
project is crucial, how we will determine if the project was a success, what
approach or methodology we will follow and what the major dates or milestones
for key points are.

1. Demo
Or if you want, we can be fancy and call it: Showtime! The demo takes place at
the end of each two-week sprint. It is simply a bi-weekly showcase of outputs
that we as a team managed to create since we last met. During the demo, every
member should share their masterpieces with others – we usually do this by
putting some screenshots to the never-ending Google slides presentation: for a
certain project, we only have one for all demos, so that we can easily see our
progress.

It is always encouraging to see how our pieces go together and gradually form
the final product we work on. What's most important is that demo is a great
springboard for the continuous feedback we provide to each other in
retrospective meetings.

2. Retrospective
Let's go back in time! The retrospective is perhaps one of the most beneficial
tools for our teams. It helps us evaluate the good and identify the worse
moments of the sprint, with an emphasis on defining improvements in problematic
spots. In addition, it supports the engagement of individual team members,
advocates collaboration, talking and setting boundaries so that solutions are
both deployable and business friendly.

So how do we do this? At first, we answer two simple questions:

 * What did we manage to do well?
 * What could we have done better?

Again, we do that in a digital space and Google spreadsheets have been pretty
useful so far. We take some time for that together and after we finish, we read
our observations one by one and share it with others. We don't hold back when it
comes to praise and we don't fear facing the issues either. This is the best
time to be really honest. Staying transparent gives a great opportunity for
improvement.

After that, we move on to the most important point of the retrospective and it
is the call-to-action. We all try to figure out the question:

 * What are our next steps (based on previous answers)?

We suggest what we plan to improve and focus on during the next sprint, so that
we avoid previous trouble spots. It's also good to write it down and have it in
front of us to keep that in mind.

3. Planning
Our retrospective ritual is normally followed by planning, where we sync our
expectations and set well-defined, reachable goals that we would like to
accomplish to make the next sprint a success.“Plans are nothing, planning is
everything.” 

TIP: Sometimes we find it helpful to set the sprint goal in form of a particular 
user story
[https://www.lbstudio.sk/blog/simple-user-stories-to-quickly-improve-your-designs/]
. We can do it in the form of a sentence that describes the user’s need to
accomplish some goal:

> As a ___ I want to ___, so that I ___.
So when we, for example, design a health-care tool for parents, it can go like
this: As a [parent], I want to [know about the results of my child's blood test
as soon as possible], so that I [know that he is safe and can go to school]. We
also describe what determines this goal as done – some acceptance criteria, i.e.
parent receives notification with blood results.

Once we are aligned on the sprint goal, we are able to define the outcomes that
we have to deliver and specify detailed tasks that need to be done. Here comes
the budgeting, when we estimate how much time or how many story points specific
tasks will require. According to this, we are able to define priorities that we
have to deliver to achieve a minimum viable solution, or improve its fidelity if
that is a goal of the sprint.

Then we continue by estimating our capacities: we usually draw a big table with
dates on a whiteboard and every member puts a tick by days they are available
and a cross by those days they are not. This is how we can easily count how much
time each of us will spend working on the project during the sprint. It allows
us to distribute prioritized tasks and spot any dependencies. And the next
sprint can begin!


4. Daily morning standups
The standup is the only ritual that we do on a daily basis. It's nothing
complicated, but it’s genuinely helpful. Every morning, we let our team know
what each of us managed to do yesterday, what we plan on doing today and whether
we have any blockers (some possible obstacles that could occur / have occurred
already and make it impossible for us to achieve the goal). It's not necessary
to meet for the standup (especially when we work from different places), so we
like to use Slack or Skype calls.

We love being transparent and thanks to this ritual everyone knows what's going
on with the project. It typically lasts just a few minutes but can define how
the whole day will look. Keeping everyone updated helps us be agile and flexible
and solve the possible problems together and faster.

5. Sparring with the support team
Last but not least, a great place that helps the team to be “in the same boat”
is sparring: a 1 – 2 hour cooperation of every member of the value team &
important stakeholders at one place, once a week. It is a great place to
brainstorm ideas together on how to grab a given issue and understand why the
solution was chosen.

The key benefit of such ritual is that we maintain a shared understanding at all
times: we know that design is all about collaboration, not a solo activity.
Also, we measure the value asap & often and fix the process – not just the
product.


Pillars of our rituals
To wrap this all up, here is a list of some useful not-to-forgets we cannot
imagine our rituals without:

 * Place and time: If we don't schedule it well in advance, it's never going to
   happen. Simple as that. It might sound too obvious, but it's easy to forget.
   Finding the regular time and place is half of the success.
 * Facilitator: As one of our colleagues said, an effective facilitator is like
   a good DJ: they can sense and respond adequately to the mood in the room.
   Having an active listener and nifty speaker at the same time helps us to
   focus in the right direction.
 * Time timer: an audible countdown timer. We learned to trust the process and
   to never underestimate the power of timing. This magic item always keeps us
   on track and pushes us to be as effective as possible. Try it too!
 * Post-its: the best friends of UX designers, right? Arthur Fry, who first used
   them in 1947 to not get lost in his hymnbook, probably didn't know that it
   would become the perfect tool of ideation for thousands of designers.
 * Snacks: Well, nobody likes sitting there hungry. Food connects people and
   having a familiar, homey atmosphere in our events makes it all much nicer.

So yeah, that was how we like to work regularly. If you also have some unique
rituals that work for you, feel free to share them with us. We always love to
improve!

Lean UX rituals: An invaluable tool for agile design teams

Každý rok si v LB* lámeme hlavu nad tým, akú koncoročnú PF-ku vymyslieť, aby to
nebola len ďalšia zbytočnosť, ktorá bude na korporátnych poličkách zapadať
prachom. Našimi darčekmi sa každý rok snažíme adresátov niečo naučiť alebo im
aspoň pripomenúť, aké je dôležité nezabúdať na koncového používateľa.

Mohli ste už od nás dostať napríklad podpivníky s UX metodikami, ručne tlačené
pohľadnice s citátom „People over pixels“ alebo aj UX pexeso. Ako robiť produkty
dobre už teda viete. Tento rok sme sa rozhodli dať vám návod, ako robiť dobré
produkty. :)

V tomto článku sa dočítate:

 * Prečo vznikol LB* Workshop Canvas Toolbox
 * LB* Workshop Canvas Toolbox na stiahnutie
 * Ako toolbox používať
 * Ako ho môžete vylepšiť

Pomáhame tvoriť produkty s víziou
Počas roka 2019 sme v LB* stáli pred novou výzvou. S mnohými klientmi sme sa od
dizajnovania čiastkových projektových zadaní posunuli k oveľa zaujímavejšej, ale
aj náročnejšej spolupráci. Pomáhame im transformovať vnútornú kultúru tak, aby
boli všetci zladení na vízii svojej práce, vízii produktov a služieb, ktoré
tvoria a ponúkajú.

Facilitovali sme desiatky školení a workshopov, ktorých cieľom bolo priviesť
účastníkov k pochopeniu a zhodnutiu sa na tom, čo má ich práca či daný projekt
naplniť. A postupne sme si k tomu vytvorili sadu užitočných kanvasov, ktoré nám
pomáhajú nielen dobre „vykopnúť“ každý projekt, ale hlavne nútia účastníkov
premýšľať, či daný projekt vôbec bude dávať zmysel pre používateľa.

Pri workshopoch sme najskôr využívali kanvasy Lean Service Creation
[https://leanservicecreation.com/] od fínskych Futurice. Postupne sme ich však
začali upravovať podľa potrieb nášho trhu, na základe našich zistení z každej
spolupráce a inšpirovali sme sa aj ďalšími prístupmi ako design challenge
framing či Lean UX. A dnes prvýkrát v ucelenej podobe zverejňujeme náš...

LB* Workshop Canvas Toolbox
Na tomto odkaze si môžete voľne stiahnuť sériu kanvasov, ktoré sme v uplynulom
roku používali a vylepšovali na našich workshopoch s klientmi ako poisťovňa
Dôvera, Orange Slovensko, Tatra banka aj na workshopoch pre SUXA
[https://www.suxa.sk/] či Brno Design Days [https://brnodesigndays.cz/].

Stiahnite si LB* Workshop Canvas Toolbox
[http://bit.ly/LB_Workshop_Canvas_Toolbox]
Naša sada kanvasov pomáha projektovým tímom zamyslieť sa nad zadaným problémom z
pohľadu:

 * cieľov, ktoré chcú dosiahnuť,
 * používateľov, na ktorých cielia,
 * a hypotéz, na ktorých stavajú.

Toto zamyslenie im pomáha definovať, aké konkrétne výsledky práce chcú
dosiahnuť. Vďaka tomu sú pri hľadaní najlepšieho možného nápadu schopní oprostiť
sa od svojich predstáv o riešení, ktoré si často prinášajú už do začiatku
projektu a veľmi ťažko sa im od nich ustupuje.

S kanvasmi dokážete identifikovať príležitosti, ale aj možné úskalia, a odhaliť,
o čo majú používatelia skutočný záujem. Pochopíte, v čom by vlastne mala
spočívať najväčšia hodnota tvoreného riešenia, a navrhnete ich hneď niekoľko, aj
spolu s nápadmi, ako si overiť, či budú mať úspech.

Ako používať sadu kanvasov od LB*
Set kanvasov môžete použiť pri akomkoľvek type projektu, či už chcete vytvoriť
nový produkt, alebo priniesť inovácie do existujúceho riešenia. Do ideácie
zapojte všetkých relevantných kolegov, ktorí svojimi podnetmi môžu pomôcť k
tvorbe dobrého riešenia – svoj tím, ďalších stakeholderov, aj zástupcu
dodávateľa, ak viete, že si ho projekt bude vyžadovať.

Jednotlivé aktivity timeboxujte, teda na vyplnenie každého kanvasu si stanovte
istý čas. S efektívnym priebehom workshopu vám môže pomôcť facilitátor, ktorý
vzniknutý tím prevedie celým procesom ideácie. Mal by sa tiež starať o to, aby
svojimi nápadmi a myšlienkami prispieval každý účastník.

Kanvasy sú pripravené na tlač vo formáte A1, aby ste na ne zmestili všetky
post-ity so svojimi nápadmi. Ak ich nepopíšete, stačí ich vytlačiť raz a
používať opakovane s každým novým projektom. A keď už kanvasy nebudete
potrebovať, môžete z nich spraviť napríklad darčekové tašky, ako sme vyrobili my
na klientské PF-ky. :)

I. Vízia používateľskej skúsenosti
Už prvé dva kanvasy o Vízii používateľskej skúsenosti vás prinútia zamyslieť sa
nad UX. Na pohľad pôsobia rovnako, no odlišujú sa v kontexte, v akom vás o
zákazníckej skúsenosti nútia uvažovať. Spoločne vám pomôžu zarámcovať, čo
chcete, aby používateľ pri využití vášho produktu alebo vašej služby zažíval a
cítil, aj čo by si mal popri tom myslieť. Vďaka týmto kanvasom už od začiatku
projektového kickoffu začínate byť so svojím tímom zladení na jeho vízii.

II. Biznis zámer a kontext
Kanvas Biznis zámer a kontext pomôže vášmu tímu ujasniť si, čo je vlastne vašou
úlohou – ideálne bez toho, že by ste už v tejto chvíli mali v hlave konkrétne
riešenia. Snažte sa od nich oprostiť a uvažujte v abstraktnejšej rovine. Aby ste
sa zladili v očakávaných cieľoch, nezabudnite zapojiť aj manažment a tvorcu
nápadu. Aký biznis problém idete riešiť? Prečo je to vôbec dôležité a aké dáta
vám o tom vypovedajú?

Tento kanvas vám zároveň pomôže identifikovať, aké riziká môžu vstúpiť do
procesu a koho treba do projektu zapojiť, aby bol zrealizovaný. Stanovíte si
tiež kritériá, kedy budete projekt považovať za úspešný, a rozhodli sme sa
zapojiť aj otázky smerujúce k spoločenskému významu. Veríme, že aj vďaka tomu
bude čoraz viac slovenských firiem tvoriť produky a služby s pozitívnym
prínosom.

III. Používatelia
Ešte predtým, ako začnete navrhovať možné riešenia problému, ktorý ste si
zadefinovali, musíte vedieť, pre koho ich vlastne dizajnujete. Aby ste našli
naozaj dobré riešenie, potrebujete identifikovať používateľské skupiny a spoznať
ich. Pri vypĺňaní kanvasu Používatelia neuvažujte len o demografii, zamerajte sa
na rôzne používateľské hodnoty a motivácie, ktoré ich môžu priviesť k vášmu
produktu, emócie, ktoré v nich chcete vzbudiť, a konkrétne potreby, ktoré im
môžete pomôcť naplniť.

Je takmer nemožné urobiť to správne na prvý raz, takže buďte pripravení svoje
post-ity presúvať a preskupovať. Ak zatiaľ o používateľoch nemáte dáta z
výskumu, pokojne pracujte len so svojimi predpokladmi. A na záver sa rozhodnite,
ktorá skupina používateľov bude pre vás tou primárnou. Nebojte sa, ak sa to
neskôr ukáže ako nesprávny výber – tomuto kanvasu (ako aj všetkým ostatným) sa
môžete kedykoľvek vrátiť a svoje rozhodnutie zmeniť na základe toho, čo ukáže
výskum.

IV. Dizajnová výzva
Keď už viete, čo je vaším biznis cieľom, pre koho ho budete dizajnovať, aj aký
prínos by mali používatelia pocítiť, je čas sformulovať Dizajnovú výzvu 
projektu. Jej štruktúra je jednoduchá, no nájsť tú správnu formuláciu býva
celkom náročné. Vrátťe sa však k predchádzajúcim kanvasom a dajte do kontextu
svoje doterajšie myšlienky:

> Ako by ste mohli uskutočniť svoj biznis zámer (odpoveď na prvú otázku z kanvasu 
Biznis zámer a kontext) pre primárnu skupinu používateľov tak, aby pocítili
žiadaný prínos (informácie o vašej primárnej používateľskej skupine z kanvasu 
Používatelia)?
Dizajnovú výzvu majte neustále na očiach. Vyveste si ju napríklad na stenu a
počas projektu si ju priebežne pripomínajte na tímových stretnutiach aj pri
individuálnej práci.

V. Riešenia
Dobre zadefinovaná dizajnová výzva vás nasmeruje k Brainstormingu riešení a
nápadov. Zamyslite sa, čo by mohlo eliminovať negatívne či vzbudiť pozitívne
emócie u cieľovej skupiny používateľov. Pripomeňte si obmedzenia aj spoločenský
rozmer projektu z kanvasu Biznis zámer a kontext a skúste ich zohľadniť.

Pamätajte si, že riešenie, ktoré vám napadlo, nie je jediné a možno ani to
najsprávnejšie. Preto je dobré zapojiť do takéhoto projektového kickoffu naozaj
všetkých relevantných ľudí, ktorým môžu napadnúť riešenia, na aké by ste si bez
nich nespomenuli. Ak ste dizajnovú výzvu sformulovali dobre, mali by ste byť
schopní vymyslieť aspoň päť nápadov. Keď to nejde, zrejme je vaša dizajnová
výzva príliš úzka alebo naopak – príliš nekonkrétna.

VI. Experimenty
A teraz veľké odhalenie: Všetko, čo ste doteraz vytvorili, je len jeden veľký
predpoklad, ktorý treba overiť. Pri svojich úvahách a nápadoch ste zrejme
vychádzali z nejakých skúseností či dokonca dát, no implementácia, ktorá vzniká,
je stále iba hypotézou, že toto riešenie by mohlo fungovať.

Takže teraz sa s využitím kanvasu Experimenty zamyslite nad tým, ktoré hypotézy
sú pre úspech tohto riešenia najkľúčovejšie, a vymyslite spôsob, ako ich overiť.
Sústreďte sa na kritické predpoklady, teda také, na ktorých potvrdení alebo
vyvrátení stojí celá projektová vízia. Hľadajte spôsoby, ako to urobiť
jednoducho, rýchlo a lacno, teda bez toho, že by ste museli vynakladať veľké
zdroje na vytvorenie mohutného experimentu.

Všetko, čo zistíte, zahrňte do projektovej roadmapy. ❤️
Pomôžte nám toolbox vylepšovať
Tak ako k projektom, aj k sade kanvasov sa snažíme pristupovať leanovo a
priebežne ich budeme upravovať. Zároveň ich zverejňujeme pod licenciou Creative
Commons BY-SA, ktorá vám dovoľuje ďalej ich upravovať a adaptovať na vlastné
potreby, stačí pritom uviesť LB* ako zdroj pôvodného materiálu.

Budeme radi, ak nám napíšete, keď sa vám LB* Workshop Canvas Toolbox pri
niektorom projekte podarí využiť. Zaujíma nás, ako vám kanvasy pomohli a či by
ste v nich niečo chceli upraviť. Postupne ich budeme iterovať a pridávať k nim
ďalšie relevantné kanvasy, ktoré sa ukážu ako užitočné pre tvorbu dobrých
produktov a služieb a úspešné zladenie tímov na produktovej vízii.

A do roku 2020 vám prajeme, aby každý projekt, na ktorom budete pracovať, dával
zmysel vám aj používateľom!

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