Dexterity User Experience provides user experience (UX) services customized for teaching startup team members how to do UX activities, such as customer journey maps, usability testing, and science-based user interface design.
Dexterity helps startups visualize the context around customer experiences, based on technology trends, the science of human behavior, and specific insights from hypothesis testing.
We connect problems to possible solutions with product concepts, journey maps, and prototypes.
Our design methods enable startups to tell a user experience story that communicates value propositions to stakeholders, including investors.
Types of services
We have 3 types of UX services, based on the level of UX skills, urgent needs, & goals of the startup.
- Apprenticeship: Dexterity takes the lead on the UX activity, with startup team members actively helping and participating.
- Coaching: Dexterity helps make the plan for the activity, but the startup team members are responsible for doing the UX activity themselves. Dexterity helps out when needed, such as especially difficult steps of the activity.
- Mentoring: The startup team members take full responsibility for the UX activity. They get advice from Dexterity on a regular basis.
In an optimal progression, startup team members act as apprentices until they are ready to do it themselves, with some coaching. Later, they can do the UX activity on their own, with some mentoring. Eventually, they become totally self-sufficient in UX work and Dexterity wishes them well on their journey!
Levels
In the startup world, it is useful to think of UX activities happening at 3 levels.
- Business model: The big questions and big issues that the startup is dealing with, such as which customer segment to serve first, how to explain the customer context to investors, and when it is time to pivot.
- User insights: Learning from potential customers and other stakeholders, addressing assumptions that are key to the business model, and testing hypotheses for customer validation.
- User interface design: Making sure software and digital content is usable, enjoyable, and whatever else the users need it to accomplish. This includes marketing and customer support information, so even non-software startups have user interfaces to consider.
Examples of possible services for startups
Business model
- Apprenticeship: Conducting a workshop on customer journey mapping. The end result is a work product that helps the startup team make strategic decisions.
- Coaching: Giving input on pitch presentations to potential investors.
- Mentoring: Advising on business model development, pivots, and other strategic decisions being made by the founders/board.
User insights
- Apprenticeship: Conducting a usability test. Designing the study, recruiting participants, conducting the study, and analyzing results. Startup team members are most active as note-takers during the usability test sessions.
- Coaching: Leading some aspects of customer validation, such as hypothesis formation, customer interview questions, and making sense of feedback, while startup team members do the actual customer interviews.
- Mentoring: Leading a “book club” discussion of “Validating Product Ideas” by Tomer Sharon.
User interface design
- Apprenticeship: Redesigning a user interface, with startup team members asked to look up background research and guidelines to support the design decisions.
- Coaching: Doing an expert review of the team’s existing UI design, leading to a discussion of action items to improve the usability of the application.
- Mentoring: Discussing UI trends and best practices to see where the startup is excelling and where it may need to explore new interaction design patterns.