Abstract
Early-stage software startups have specific challenges that need to be overcome to survive in the market, e.g., acquiring initial investment, managing multiple tasks, and delivering value to the customer. Thus, User Experience (UX) practices can leverage the product value creation of these startups. Although UX practices are consolidated in the literature and the industry, it is necessary to verify how early-stage software startups have applied these practices because of their challenges. Therefore, the goal of this paper was to investigate how early-stage software startups use UX practices. We interviewed five early-stage software startups, represented by six employees divided between UX designers and developers. After qualitative analysis of the responses obtained, we identified that the startups have some specific reasons for using the practices, such as support in building the minimum viable product and fostering mentoring programs. Besides, we observed that these software startups understand that UX practices can generate value for the customer, the product, and potential investors. Furthermore, we identified several challenges these startups face when using UX practices, linked to the small team, users participating in the practices, methodology, time, and investment. Finally, we synthesize the main findings of our research into a set of five recommendations for early-stage software startups when using UX practices, among them the use of the results of UX practices to generate value for investors and the development of strategies to identify and engage users.
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Guerino, G.C., Dias, N.S.B.C., Chanin, R., Prikladnicki, R., Balancieri, R., Leal, G.C.L. (2021). User Experience Practices in Early-Stage Software Startups - An Exploratory Study. In: Wang, X., Martini, A., Nguyen-Duc, A., Stray, V. (eds) Software Business. ICSOB 2021. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 434. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91983-2_10
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