Healthy UX, not lean

There’s a dangerous, anti-deliverable meme lurking about that damages good teams.

First, it removes the need for engineers and managers to think critically about what problems they need to address, and what methods they should use to address them. Second, it suggests user experience professionals are not as capable as other professionals on the team to make decisions about what work needs to be done, at what fidelity, and with whom.

That irks me. It’s a quick fix more useful for lazy teams than for lean start-ups.

I’ve put together a collection of deliverables on Flickr that help identify, clarify, or evaluate important problems and opportunities facing organizations. These deliverables were good. They took time. And they’re demonstrative of how “deliverables” add value to the organization, help create better products, and help improve how teams think.

Deliverables are not the problem. User experience practitioners are not in the deliverables business. We’re in the business of finding and evaluating problems and solutions.