I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It explains UX design in the context of lean startups. It’s a great read for anyone, even if you don’t work at a startup. And it made me laugh out loud several times as I was reading. (I listen to Laura’s podcast, What is Wrong with UX, so I’m familiar with her sarcastic sense of humor.)

Laura shows you how to validate hypotheses with UX tools like user research. She goes into detail about the different user research methods out there and when to use them.

I’m glad Laura also explains an MVP. Contrary to popular belief, an MVP is not the s***tiest version of your product you can ship. An MVP is the smallest thing you can build to validate or invalidate a hypothesis.

Laura uses funny stories and examples to illustrate her points. I appreciate her analogy “fixating on the cupholders.” Fixating on the cupholders is like building a car that doesn’t have any brakes, yet focusing on how to design the cup holders. This analogy refers to when teams channel time and money into building the wrong things, such as building low priority features.

Laura talks about fixating on cupholders in the context of startups, but I’ve seen this happen outside of startups.

I also appreciate Laura’s approach to new product ideas. Laura says, don’t try to come up with brilliant product ideas out of thin air. Instead, think about every product as a solution to somebody’s problem.

This book is packed with great stuff for entrepreneurs and UX designers. Do yourself a favor and read it. :)