UX for Lean Startups

Chapter 7. Design Hacks

In this chapter:

• Learn several tricks that will help you pretend to be a designer. (There’s more to it than stylish glasses and comically oversized watches.)

• Understand how to take advantage of design patterns to get your own product built faster.

• Learn when to steal, when to borrow, and when to hire a designer.

Nope. This is also not the chapter where I teach you to be a fabulous designer. (Note: None of the chapters are.)

Instead, this is the chapter where I share some easy tricks and tips for designing faster and smarter. If you have little to no experience designing products, this chapter will make it so you don’t have to learn absolutely everything from scratch.

Lean UX isn’t about doing bad design work. It’s about learning as quickly as possible, and it’s impossible to learn anything from a really bad design (other than the fact that people typically aren’t interested in using things that are really badly designed).

That being said, most Lean companies move a hell of a lot faster than companies you may be used to working for. Sometimes, having a few tricks up your sleeve that help you design faster can be the difference between a great product and a poorly thought out piece of crap. I know which one I’d rather build.

You may feel like some of these design hacks are cheating. I totally understand your concern. Get over it. When I was just starting out, I had a mentor who helpfully explained to me that the most important thing to know is that you will very rarely ...