UXA: SPUD – The Lean Agile UX Process
The creation of UXA’s will require UX and the development (software engines) team to work together in an agile manner to ensure lean development practices are adhered too. Essentially the following steps need to be executed per iteration:
- Design Research leading to Sketch
- Prototype (possibly paper?)
- Usability Testing
- Developement using lean agile practices
Prior to sketching the Information Architects (IA) needs to understand the domain/users/tasks. In situ research allows a 1st stable of UX. Once a number of sketching iterations have been complete (possible over a few hours), prototyping (good UI design can’t be communicated in a document!) and usability testing can be undertaken. Prototyping is a cheap/fast way of identifying problems in the interface, and aids interface refinement. Usability testing can be conducted by the UX team (for example via video) or outsources to companies such as Creative Good, User Centric, Flow etc. At the end of this cycle a UX specifications (high fidelity wire frames annotated) is sometimes produced.
The SPU steps coupled with stories provide the development team with the information they need to build the application. Ideally the SPU cycle would be run one iteration ahead of the development team, ensuring that the UX team still has bandwidth to support the development team in the actual build.
SCRUM is ideally suited to running SPUD, coupled with Lean development practices to ensure minimum waste – future blog posting to cover this in more detail.
What is clear is that UX and the software engineers need to collaborate to make Agile UX work. Any type of wall between UX and development will seriously impact application development. Create your SCRUM team of software engineers, UX and a tester.
Finally, consider running Inspiration Sessions every once in a while to provide stakeholders with insight into trends, new concepts etc
Relevant links:
- SpoolCast: Follow-up Podcast for An Agile UX Primer
- UX in an Agile Environment with Jeff Patton
- Usability
- Twelve emerging best practices for adding UX work to Agile development
- Dirty hands required
- Agile + UX: six strategies for more agile user experience
- SpoolCast: Roughing it with Interactive Prototypes
- Online Graph Paper
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Bronnen Agile at ting said this on September 21, 2010 at 9:29 am |