anchor.diff:          p I used this opportunity to implement the user-centered design process I had been studying for the first few months of my freelance career. This was the first project where I was designing a user's experience rather than just a website. While my process most certainly wasn't perfect, I wanted to share my journey and what I learned along the way.
   
           h4.subheader Step 1. Stakeholder Workshop
  -        p I began the project by facilitating a stakeholder workshop with Thengine's founders. I started us off by offering three guiding questions:
  +        p I began the project by facilitating a stakeholder workshop with Thengine's founders that included:
  +        ul
  +          li Defining objectives
  +          li Defining target audiences
  +          li Brainstorming business concepts / feature ideas
  +          li Prioritizing based on viability and value
  +
  +        p I was reading 
  +          a(href="http://www.amazon.com/UX-Lean-Startups-Experience-Research/dp/1449334911/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419388597&sr=1-1&keywords=ux+for+lean+startups", title="check out UX for Lean Startups on Amazon")
  +            em UX for Lean Startups
  +          |  by Laura Klein and used her approach to help craft our iteration/validation process and to communicate the concept of Lean UX to Thengine's founders.
  +
  +        p I used three guiding questions from Laura Klein's book to help guide the project definition:
           ul
             li What is the root of the problem that local musicians  face in making a living?
             li How does our product solve that problem?
             li How do we measure the success of our efforts?
   
  -        p I was reading 
  -          a(href="http://www.amazon.com/UX-Lean-Startups-Experience-Research/dp/1449334911/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419388597&sr=1-1&keywords=ux+for+lean+startups", title="check out UX for Lean Startups on Amazon")
  -            em UX for Lean Startups
  -          |  by Laura Klein and used her approach to help craft our iteration/validation process and to communicate the concept of Lean UX to Thengine's founders.
           ul.m-image-grid
             li
               img(src="images/thengine-brainstorm-3.jpg" alt="a third whiteboard image showing a brainstorm for thengine" title="Thengine UX Brainstorm Whiteboard 3")
  
positive.code:             img(src="images/thengine-brainstorm-2.jpg" alt="another brainstorming session for thengine's mvp" title="Thengine UX Brainstorm Whiteboard 2")
  
          h4.subheader Step 2. User Research
          p Once we had an idea of the problem we were solving and who were solving it for, I invited Thengine's founders to join me in a period of user research. We needed to get out of the building and talk with local musicians and their fans. I wanted us to validate the premises behind the business concepts we defined before we started designing and building our MVP.
  
          figure
            img(src="images/thengine-user-research-outline.jpg", alt="")
  
negative.code:           img(src="images/thengine-homepage-macbook.jpg" alt="a live screenshot of thengine's homepage on a macbook pro" title="Thengine MVP UX Device Mockup 1")
  
          h3 Room for Improvement
          p Throughout the project I identified some places in my work where I could most certainly improve. Here are a few takeaways:
          ul
            li The project should have taken place in a much shorter amount of time and with physical co-location. Working remotely seemed to be the biggest obstacle to lean processes.
            li I should have insisted that all members of Thengine's team get out of the building and talk to local musicians and their fans. This would have created universal buy-in to the research insights and would have resulted in a better MVP.
            li My design process needed a tighter validation cycle. I should have created a weekly sprint schedule with team-wide user research planned for the same day of every week so we were never more than five days away from validation.
            li I wish we would have set aside budget to outsource user recruitment. It was amazing how much time it took to manage the user recruitment process and how little energy it left over to do the actual research and testing.