Collaborative user experience design in agile development
Anu Ramaswamy ([email protected])
Empatica Systems!Facilitating Collaborative Design
Create a shared understanding of the user
-‐ It helps to create visual models of users and share them across team members in all loca4ons
-‐ When offshoring product development ensure that you create an empathy for the user in the offshore team
Use internal releases to validate User Journeys
-‐ Visualize evolu4on of the user interface across mul4ple internal releases
-‐ Storyboard the user experience once every 2-‐3 itera4ons (4 to 6 weeks), and showcase the user journey in those itera4ons
Collaboratively sketch the interactions
-‐ Use collabora4ve design sessions (like collabora4ve sketching) as oKen as you can– try to include both users and developers while sketching
-‐ Sketch interac4ons, not user stories
Validate key design guidelines with mockups
Hi-‐fi mockups can help, but, for limited purposes: -‐ To establish UI
paQerns for global naviga4on elements early in the project
-‐ As a basis for valida4ng UI architecture
-‐ Assessing the need for visual assets
Let’s not get too attached to this thing though!
Do RITE with lo-fi prototypes to keep up!
-‐ Quickly steer away from high fidelity prototyping to enable Rapid Itera4ve Tes4ng and Evalua4on of design
-‐ The only design that maQers from now on is the one in the real product!
Tools that do the trick
Get religious about usability testing
-‐ You only need 3-‐5 people tes4ng every itera4on
-‐ Hallway tes4ng, guerilla tes4ng, remote tes4ng, anything is beQer than nothing
-‐ Broadcast usability test session recordings and results to the team – upload videos and results for offshore teams to see
Practice Pull – with team and with users
q Design decisions made between designers and stakeholders
q Mockups that are difficult to update
q Tolerance to lack of usability testing
q Visual design show cases too early in the project
q Designs built collaboratively with users and developers
q Designs that are easy to update
q Usability testing becomes a culture
q Visual design elements layered in at the right time
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