Results by Design: UX Insights for Business Leaders

Description: In this episode, we journey into integrating Design Thinking and Lean UX methods into practical workflows. With over 16 years of experience, Michael Woo—Director of UX at UpTop—shares candid reflections and pivotal moments from his career, shedding light on the evolution of design methodologies and problem-solving approaches.

Learn About:

• Applications of Design Thinking and Lean UX Method in Problem-Solving
• Design Thinking as a Mindset
• Origin of UpTop’s UX Strategy Sprint Process
• Role of Structured Processes in Company Breakthroughs
• Difference Between UX Strategy Sprint and Envisioning Sprint

Interview Participants:

• Craig Nishizaki, Head of Business @ UpTop
• Michael Woo, Director of UX @ UpTop

Transcript

Intro:
Welcome to Results by Design UX Insights for business leaders, the podcast that dives deep into the world of UX design, strategy and insights. Tune in, take action, and design your way to success.

Craig Nishizaki:
Hi everyone. I’m Craig.

Michael Woo:
And I’m Michael. And we are your host for the Results by Design podcast. Welcome back, Craig. How are you doing?

Craig Nishizaki:
I’m doing well. It’s a beautiful day. It’s sunny out. Can’t beat that. How are you doing?

Michael Woo:
It is, I’m doing great, man. I’m excited about today’s podcast. Let’s let the listeners know what we’re going to talk about today.

Craig Nishizaki:
Yeah. In our episode titled Breaking Barriers Strategies for Conquering Digital Business Challenges, we talked about the five most common problems that hold companies back from being successful in developing their digital business, digital product or digital project. And you and your team developed a structured approach to help companies solve complex business problems, and I thought it’d be really interesting to have a conversation about that process. How’s that sound?

Michael Woo:
Love it. Let’s do this.

Craig Nishizaki:
Right. All right, let’s go. So when did you start applying design thinking and lean UX methods in the work that you do, Mike?

Michael Woo:
That’s a good question. Thinking back about 16 years ago, I think a lot of folks at that time were probably not using the terms design thinking or lean ux. I know during my tenure at Big Fish Games, I was a in-house product designer focus on the website, which was our primary digital distribution platform. We prioritize user-centered design a more common term than investing time in prototyping and testing, which are all integral aspects of design thinking. We had a research team and a research lab, and we’re constantly funneling customers in every other day, testing designs for the website and games. But I’m pretty sure I never used the word design thinking during my time there, and there wasn’t anything lean about our methods either. We designed all of our mockups in Photoshop for heaven’s sake, and I remember redlining and Photoshop as well. Can you believe that?

Fast forward to 2014, when I joined Up Top, which was my first foray, foray into the agency world, this was when things began to change for me. Rather than joining a design team with an established methodology for how they approach Design Up Top at that time didn’t have an established process or an approach for solving problems. However, each designer with their own ways still did a great job in spite of this. I believe that is why I was brought in as a design lead to help coalesce the team and our approach to design. This is also time when I started to exercise lean UX methods.

Craig Nishizaki:
Got it. Yeah. And when you think about that, how have design thinking and lean UX methods influenced your approach to problem solving?

Michael Woo:
Yeah, so as I made the transition from an in-house designer to an agency designer, I quickly realized some major differences. The unpredictable nature of the type of problems that you’re solving for and the constraints that you have to operate within, such as budget, resources, and time. I remember doing a lot of research on the internet coming across the Stanford D schools, design thinking methodology made popular by Ideal, and reading several books including Lean UX and the Five Day Design Sprint by Jake Knapp. The goal was to try and find a repeatable process that consistently delivered outcomes and results that we were hoping to achieve at the end of every client engagement.

First I knew I wanted to make up tops design approach, mirror the design thinking methodology of empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test Up Top had already been successful at doing the first three parts of it. Discovery, which includes understanding the problem space and its users, and then coming up with solutions through the ideation process. But I remember seeing opportunities where we could do more specifically around prototyping and testing. I remember the team leveraging the heck out of Envision when it was the Go-to prototyping app. We tested designs with users and iterated on them using actionable insights. Although we had been doing this already on some projects, there wasn’t as much emphasis placed on these activities across the board. We also began to pivot away from time consuming deliverables at that time, often printed in the early days that may have reached an initial audience of a few and quickly became obsolete as the breakneck speed of design and iteration took hold. We said goodbye to lengthy printed PDFs and manual red lines, and began to replace those with online tools that clients and developers could access. Again, always asking how can UpTop deliver more value with less?

Craig Nishizaki:
Yeah, I remember those days where we were putting together big deliverables packages and very static, if you will. I remember actually the first few times that we showed people in vision prototypes, it was mind blowing to them, and I thought you were onto something for sure. Well, when people think about terms like design thinking or lean ux, they think of them primarily as a process or a method. And years ago when you and I spoke at A CMO summit about design, you dropped a nugget that just stuck with me over the years. You said that design thinking is not just a method, but a mindset. What do you mean when you say design thinking is a mindset?

Michael Woo:
That’s a great question, and I do remember that talk we gave, whether we’re talking about design thinking or lean ux, for those people who are familiar with these, it’s no secret that these are more than processes or methodologies. They encompass how you approach and think through a problem. That’s why it’s referred to as a mindset. Design thinking is a learning mindset. It is a bias towards action. It’s practicing any one of the five design thinking pillars or all of ’em. I know there’s naysayers out there in the design community that say, design thinking doesn’t work and that it is all hype and smoke and mirrors. But to that, I say to each their own, right, if it works for you, great. Keep at it. Keep doing what you’re doing. It’s not going to solve all of your problems alone because it’s just a framework. You still have to do the work.

Craig Nishizaki:
Yeah, very true. Very true. But I think one thing that design thinking opened the door to was for the business leaders to start thinking about design or thinking about how to solve problems and allowed for UX consultants and UX leaders to be a part of that problem solving. So even though the design community, there is a denomination, if you will, of them that are naysayers, I feel like design thinking itself, just the adoption of it across the board really opened the door to more strategic work. What do you think?

Michael Woo:
Absolutely. And it’s worked for a lot of people and it’s great when there’s no structure in place, it provides guidance, and we’ve personally seen results. Our clients have seen results, so everybody has their own methodologies and stuff like that. So I just say, Hey, as I said previously, go with what, go with what works. It may not be for everybody, but definitely

Craig Nishizaki:
Works for us. And the key I think, is that it’s codified. Whatever approach you take is codified, structured, and repeatable.

Michael Woo:
Yeah, absolutely.

Craig Nishizaki:
Alright, well, let’s jump into the origin of the UX strategy sprint process that you created. What is that origin?

Michael Woo:
Yeah, so just like the design thinking process itself where you’re constantly learning from users, then applying those learnings to improve, we have been applying that same philosophy to our own process to this very day. A big part of our strategic success with client engagements has been the collaborative design workshop. The design led workshop has been critical in driving alignment through the sharing of research expert discussions and more.

I remember years ago reading a copy again of the five day design Sprint by Jake Knapp. I was so enamored with the structured process of making a map and choosing a target, sketching computing solutions, deciding which one of those was the best one, building a prototype around that, and then testing with customers, but more importantly, the outcomes that it delivered. And I had discussed with some members of my team at that time trying to figure out how we could utilize the sprint method with our clients to achieve similar results.

And we looked at it from multiple angles but could never get it to work for us as an agency. Why? Because there’s three reasons. When we work with a new client, we typically have no prior knowledge about them, their users or their industry. Two, the problems that we’re solving for are typically more vast and ambiguous in nature. And then three, often there is little to no research that has been performed prior cramming all of that in five days. Right? So it’s not feasible. I recall reading a paragraph in the book that summed up just as much. So rather than ditching the idea altogether, we decided to borrow its principles and adapt the framework to our clients and their needs. That’s how the UX strategy sprint was born.

Craig Nishizaki:
That’s awesome. Yeah, I mean there definitely has been a pattern of clients needing to solve big problems and not having research available or current and trying to bridge that gap. This process I think has really done a great job with that. So how does a structured process like the UX strategy sprint help companies have breakthroughs?

Michael Woo:
Yeah, so first, the UX strategy Sprint was created to help our clients solve big and ambiguous problems, which is a contrast to the five day design sprint. For example. We did some work a few years ago for a regional life insurance company helping them streamline their stop-loss quoting tool for new and existing users alike as they knew the process was very complicated and with many side of desk processes attached, such as spreadsheets, documents, sticky notes, et cetera, we began, as we usually do with intake and discovery to learn more about the company, their space, their problems, and their users. One of the greatest things about our team is that we always have been able to generate velocity very quickly, which surprises most of the people that we work with. In this initial period, we decide which research activities to perform that will provide the highest value and insights that will serve as the foundation for our collaboration workshop.

For this project, I recall the team performing stakeholder and user interviews a day in the life walkthroughs, reviewing site of desk processes, like I mentioned, plotting all of this data into journey maps. And when that was ready, we pulled these artifacts into the workshop. It’s in the workshop where we define the vision and constraints at the onset. We share all the research and insights gathered today, provide a forum or key stakeholders to share their point of view or voice their concerns, and also allows us to pull in subject matter experts to shed more light in areas that may require it. In this example, some SMEs included specific unit and regional managers and an actuary that was very embedded in the quoting process. Our team walked this client through the user journey map we created of the quoting process that included more than 70 steps from start to finish.

And I remember our sponsor commenting afterwards how surprised he was to the effect of he knew there were issues, but he didn’t realize how complicated it was for their employees to do their jobs until he saw it visually mapped out. The second half of our workshop involves ideation going through several structured activities to generate as many solutions as possible. And we whittled down the best ideas through adopt voting process and made sure to never dismiss or throw away any ideas. And by the time we came out of the workshop, we had a set of prioritized solutions that we ran through a t-shirt sizing exercise on user and business impact as well as technical effort. And for you, re-imagining this pointing tool, we were now equipped to explore design concepts for what it could look like in two years time, which is what the client had defined for their vision.

The goals for this part of the design process were to expand on ideas before narrowing, then focusing on the happy path, which encompasses 80% of the use cases generally. And lastly, making sure to prototype along the way. So to wrap up the UX strategy sprint, we validated our designs by testing the prototype with actual users, having them perform key tasks. And to do this, we like to use the right usability testing method here, which stands for rapid iterative testing and evaluation. A method created many years ago by the Microsoft Xbox team. And this lean usability method has been a favorite of ours as you’re able to test the design with a total of five participants, iterating between participants as you find issues and landing on an optimized design and the outputs of our UX strategy, sprint typically includes a validated design concept that you can share internally as the company’s North Star Vision, an interactive tangible prototype that the product and development team can take action on as they suss out business and dev requirements, leading it to full fledge feature design and a summary report with all of the research and findings that led to the North Star, the UX strategy Sprint has really helped our clients get unstuck, create a shared vision and drive internal alignment all while propelling their product roadmap forward.

Craig Nishizaki:
Yeah, that case study has really resonated with me about how this was specific for an employee facing tool going through this process, but this approach actually works across multiple different scenarios and different industries because we’ve done it in the professional services space, looking at a client portal for arbitration and mediation firm. We’ve done this in the consumer space looking at this in terms of envisioning new approaches for the world’s largest online retailer in how they handle returns and commerce. And thinking about it also the envisioning or the strategy sprints that we’ve done in the health insurance space, the payer space, as well as in distribution businesses. So it’s to your point about solving complex or ambiguous problems, it’s not industry specific or use case specific. It’s a process that we’ve been able to use across the board in different scenarios, which is really, really cool.

Michael Woo:
Yes, I agree. And I remember early on before we had this process in place, it almost felt like we were customizing every workshop against every new client we were landing, and it just felt like so much work and effort to do so. But with this framework in place, we essentially pull it up, make minor adjustments to what is their space, who are the participants, etc, etc. But it’s very much streamlined now. And to your point, the outcomes are pretty consistent across industry, across client. So it’s been great.

Craig Nishizaki:
Yeah, and what’s interesting too is historically projects, the product manager or the business manager would go to the UX team and have them work with them from oftentimes after strategy was already set. And what this allows is for a client or a company, whether if they have an internal UX team for us to partner with the product, the business, and the UX team to bring them further into the strategy session and help set the strategy, which is I think really interesting. And the second thing that’s really interesting about it is that business and product folks that we talk with, that when they’re stuck as we walk through this framework with them, they realized that, yeah, you know what? This will actually help me get my funding for my initiative if I can show tangibly what the future vision or the North Star could be and the problems it could solve, and then prove a business case, whether that’s to sell more, sell faster, or be more profitable. And so it kind of checks all those boxes. It’s been a great addition to our approach in terms of how we deal with clients at a strategic level.

Michael Woo:
Yeah, couldn’t agree more.

Craig Nishizaki:
There’s another sprint that we have. It’s called an envisioning sprint. And when people look at it on the website or learn about it, they do wonder what the difference is. So could you explain the difference between a UX strategy sprint and a envisioning sprint?

Michael Woo:
Yes. So our envisioning Sprint is our other popular one that we use. Just as you mentioned, the Envision sprint is virtually the same as the UX strategy sprint, but without the user validation piece. So we have this sprint because many organizations are looking for a design concept of a North Star to create alignment and a vision forward oftentimes to get leadership buy-in and approval for further funding as you had mentioned. Thus, the validation piece of it isn’t as important at this time, but at the end of the day, having a repeatable structured design process helps create the efficiencies and the value for our clients. And there’s different methods for different scenarios as we’ve talked about today. And we’re constantly self-reflecting, adjusting and adapting as we learn, and ultimately trying to just get better at what we do.

Craig Nishizaki:
Yeah, I think that’s a great way to summarize the differences and the similarities between those sprints. And as we’ve been talking, one thing that really struck me is a lot of times you hear best practices or in terms of how a design team is going to move forward with their strategy or their design. And this structured approach really hits on the fact that understanding the problem space, doing the research, having some time there in discovery is critical to make sure that you’re solving the right problem, framing it in the right way, and setting the right vision forward. So this approach, I think, is really high value, I guess. I think that’s why so many of our clients ultimately end up moving forward with this as their initial step. Well, I think this is a great conversation, Mike. I don’t know if there’s anything else you want to pop in, but you covered it also. Well in terms of the origin of it, why you created it, how it’s created consistent outcomes. And I think clients really are looking for predictability in a plan, and that’s what it’s done, is create predictability in the plan.

Michael Woo:
And not to get ahead of you, but we do have an ebook that we created on it, so I’d advise you all to check it out, give it a try. I mean, you guys have the capabilities in house. Test it out for yourself, see how it works. And if not, I mean we’re always just a phone call away.

Craig Nishizaki:
Yeah. If you’re interested in learning more about the UX strategy sprint process, as Mike mentioned, we have an ebook that you could download. Check out the link on our screen and in the podcast description, and if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to Mike or I, you can find us on LinkedIn or go to our website and our information is in the description as well. So that’s a great way to wrap up the conversation. That’s it for today’s episode. Thanks for joining us. Join us next time as we explore innovative approaches to enhance your products and services, optimize your customer interactions, and ultimately drive success for your organization. Tune in, take action and design your way to success. We’ll see you next time.

Outro:
Thanks for tuning in to Results by Design. If you liked this episode, be sure to share and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We are also playing on all your favorite audio streaming podcast platforms, so stay connected and join us for the next one. Results by Design is brought to you by Uptalk. Our mission is to equip business leaders like you with the knowledge and tools needed to leverage UX methods and strategies to achieve tangible business outcomes and create lasting value. Whether you’re a seasoned executive or just starting to explore the world of UX, results by Design is your go-to resource for unlocking the potential of user experience to achieve remarkable results.

Tune in, take action, and design your way to success.