Fitting UX into an Agile Development Environment

Keita Del Valle

Esri International User ConferenceJuly 23–27 | San Diego Convention Center

Based on knowledge learned in the “Agile UX Toolkit” tutorial taught by John Schrag & Desiree Sy at the 2012 UPA conference. The slides

from that tutorial can be found here.

AGILE CHALLENGE:Unclear priorities

SOLUTION:Implement Iteration 0 for planning & strategy

Standard AgileUser

CenteredAgile

Elements of User Experience*

*Tier diagram taken from “The Elements of User Experience” by Jesse James Garrett

AGILE CHALLENGE:“Done” is ambiguous.

SOLUTION:Redefine “done” for the team.

AGILE CHALLENGE:Research can’t inform development in time

SOLUTION:Parallel & skew design & development

Design & UX

Development

I0 I1 I2

ResearchDesigns for I2

Research for I3

Structure

Minimum UI workDesigns from I1

User test I1 Code

Designs for I3

Research for I4

Who’s Doing What When?

AGILE CHALLENGE:Lack of documentation

SOLUTION:Invest in rich communication

AGILE CHALLENGE:Build order loses user’s story

SOLUTION:Use context to cluster & order backlog

AGILE CHALLENGE:Frequent change wastes design work

SOLUTION:Increment design process

AGILE CHALLENGE:Usability testing takes too long

SOLUTION:Use formative usability testing &

continuously recruit testers

Train Everyone on Agile

Design

Marketing

UX

Documentation

Development

Product Mgmt Project Mgmt

Business Analyst