LeanUX Principles In
Practice
SideReel’s iOS App
How the Balanced Team community and LeanUX principles made a
good team great and helped us exit for a gazillion* dollars.
#balconf
Zach Larson | @zachlarson | zachlarson.org
Monday, September 26, 2011

Me
• Co-Founder and CPO of SideReel, now
Director of Product Management at Rovi
• SideReel was founded, grew to profitability,
and exited in just over 4 years
• @zachlarson on Twitter
Monday, September 26, 2011

Talk about history...
• Anders & Lane
• AgileUX/Balanced Team/Whatever Summits
(no, seriously)
• Janice, LeanUX Principles
• Meetups
• This is a thing...
Monday, September 26, 2011

Lean UX Principles
(courtesy of Janice Fraser)
• Design + product management + development = 1 product
team
• Focus on high-value issues without losing sight of big picture
• Test design hypotheses via rapid cycles of think–make–check
• Externalize your work–be collaborative and visible
• Research with users is the best source of information
• Know when to utilize quantitative and qualitative info
• 3 most important words in UX: context, context, context
Monday, September 26, 2011

SideReel iOS Project
• SideReel is the best way to find and track all your
favorite tv shows online
• Started in 2006, didn’t get to mobile until late 2010
• Wanted to extend SideReel’s core non-watching
functionality as a companion screen
• Was our second consulting engagement type of
project
• Conception to delivery in ~7 weeks, over 250K
installs so far
• Currently at >250K installs with mediocre ratings
Monday, September 26, 2011

Monday, September 26, 2011

SideReel flew to Michigan to work with the
Atomic Object. We brought personas and
use cases
Monday, September 26, 2011

In three days we defined the project....
Monday, September 26, 2011

...created user flows...
Monday, September 26, 2011

...sketched wireframes...
Monday, September 26, 2011

...and started coding.
Monday, September 26, 2011

Along the way to
release we:
• Did user testing with paper prototypes and
my phone
• Got builds almost every day
• Developed the necessary APIs to support
the app, by the same team
• Iterated around the many design problems
we encountered
Monday, September 26, 2011

Monday, September 26, 2011

Lean UX Principles
(courtesy of Janice Fraser)
• Design + product management + development = 1 product
team
• Focus on high-value issues without losing sight of big picture
• Test design hypotheses via rapid cycles of think–make–check
• Externalize your work–be collaborative and visible
• Research with users is the best source of information
• Know when to utilize quantitative and qualitative info
• 3 most important words in UX: context, context, context
Monday, September 26, 2011

Things that worked...
• TALKING TO USERS!!!
• Vicious prioritization
• Information radiators
• Partnering with iOS experts (Atomic Object)
• Pre-existing personas and key use cases
• Extensive team cross-pollinization
• Paper prototype testing
• Incremental delivery
Monday, September 26, 2011

Things that didn’t....
• Physical separation was hard
• We weren’t ready for the technological
hurdles imposed by the mobile platform
especially w/r/t maintenance
• Some technical challenges
• I wish I’d been able to fly my whole team
out for the first session
• Prrobably should’ve designed for a higher
rating...maybe
Monday, September 26, 2011

Conclusion
An integrated team, focusing on the
same goals, working in an iterative
rhythm, testing their hypotheses, and all
sharing the same data built something
great.
(we also communicated pretty well)
Monday, September 26, 2011