--- title: "Lean UX – Trend or Real Improvement?" url: "https://www.insideuxdesign.com/en/blog/lean-ux-trend-or-real-improvement" language: "en" description: "Not a trend, but a method: how Lean UX brings proven usability tools into agile teams iteratively – and puts the user at the center of the process." published: "2023-12-23T09:00:00+01:00" updated: "2026-10-14T09:50:32+02:00" --- # Lean UX – Trend or Real Improvement? Not a trend, but a method: how Lean UX brings proven usability tools into agile teams iteratively – and puts the user at the center. Lean UX isn’t a trend – it’s something genuinely substantial. Lean UX is an important approach, rooted in software development, that lets you work in a truly user-centered way. In this article, you’ll find out why. > Lean UX is definitely more than just a trend. If you haven’t looked into Lean UX yet, you should definitely catch up. ## WHAT DOES LEAN EVEN MEAN? Before we talk about Lean UX, let’s first look at where the word comes from. “Lean” roughly means “thin” or “slim.” The Lean method is about making processes and workflows as streamlined as possible – but not(!) thin. So it’s not about putting in as little effort as possible, being cheaper, or committing fewer resources. With the Lean method, you want to use the right resources to do the right thing – the thing that actually delivers value for the customer. And you do it with the right quality and in the appropriate amount of time. LEAN means treating everyone involved in the system with respect, including customers, employees, suppliers, the environment, and so on. We apply this principle to the UX design process. That’s what we call Lean UX. ## LEAN UX: JUST ANOTHER TREND? TL;DR: Lean UX isn’t a trend – it’s something genuinely substantial. Lean UX is an important approach, rooted in software development, that lets you work in a truly user-centered way. ## A LOOK AT THE HISTORY OF SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT To explain why Lean UX isn’t just some trend, we need to go back a bit: we’re in the 1960s and 1970s. The first mainframe computers appear. Companies use computers for more and more functions. It seems like every industry can benefit from this new technology. The spread of computers opened up lots of new use cases. As a result, it became harder and harder to deliver working, clean code on reasonable budgets. The software field had to evolve. Probably the biggest contribution came from the management method known as the “Software Development Life Cycle.” The SDLC standardized the approach and made it possible to build large applications by breaking the process down into individual phases. So far, so good – or not, because the SDLC didn’t take the needs of the actual users into account. The software was simply put in front of them, and they had to deal with it. Let’s fast-forward a bit: it’s 2010. Almost everyone owns a computer and a smartphone. Within 50 years, the number of end users grew from a few hundred to several million. Applications that weren’t user-friendly were simply ignored. After all, there were plenty of alternatives. Well-known companies like BlackBerry (RIM), Palm, and Nokia had to fight for survival, and some of them were bought up. The SDLC was replaced by the waterfall model. It took over the phases of the SDLC method and added an initial requirements definition. These requirements came from business analysts and subject-matter experts in the respective fields and from then on sat at the center of the development process. Now the user was at least taken into account – but only during the initial requirements definition. This process was still far from ideal. Many developers noticed this too, turned their backs on the waterfall model, and moved to agile approaches in droves. But even agile methods like Scrum and XP, which try to involve the user in the team during the development process, ultimately couldn’t guarantee proper integration. ## OLD UX METHODS In the past, the roles were clearly defined: the UX team took control and led everything from the concept phase to the finished design. That design – along with control and responsibility – was then handed over to the development team. The advantage of this method was that developers implemented exactly what the UX designers had in mind. The designers delivered precise documentation and clean specifications, so the developers knew exactly what to do. In an agile process, however, this isn’t desirable. At the start of the process, the end result hasn’t been determined yet. The agile approach thrives on very fast iterations to reach the best possible result. ## LEAN UX: THE COMPLETE OVERHAUL How can you bring UX and agility into harmony? The answer is Lean UX. In a Lean UX environment, the idea is basically to take the best parts of current UX methodology and rebuild and adapt them for the agile world. The first things to fall victim to this reduction are rigid project goals and the belief that a single design solution is enough for the entire project. Beyond that, Lean UX relies mainly on reduction: no more need to exchange massive documentation between the UX and development teams. No more handoff contracts between departments. Instead, Lean UX focuses on team collaboration. Lean UX methods involve the entire team and benefit from ongoing discussion. The team grows together as a unit. During the development phase, live usability tests are run with prototypes. As soon as something interesting happens in a test, the team is called together to look at it as a group. Real-time user research is one component of the Lean UX process. And now for the best part: Lean UX builds on existing usability and design methods. So there’s no further hurdle – no reason not to adopt Lean UX. ## THE 8 CORE PRINCIPLES OF LEAN UX The core principles of Lean UX overlap in many places with those of Lean Startup and agile software development. Lean UX isn’t a framework, but a mindset that has to be embedded across the entire company. As mentioned above, Lean UX is a collection of well-known, proven usability and UX methods that are carried out iteratively and without much documentation overhead within an ongoing agile project, in order to quickly gather information about the current state. - User-centered approach - Cross-functional teams - Minimize waste - Small batch sizes - Continuous testing and learning - Learning before growth - Permission to fail - Doing over analyzing