All posts about
UCD

UX in an Agile process

Added on 22 August 2014 Peter Bogaards

Examples are great, but in the end we need more abstraction from all of them.

“Originally, the field of usability and interaction design was slow, cumbersome and costly. These were some of the reasons that it was not adopted very fast among practitioners. However, recent years a lot of the methods and techniques have been adapted to better fit the fast moving development processes that are predominant in software companies today. But what do you do when you can’t include users because of NDAs? How do you handle the fierce security demands, that are part of your project? Does your customer really know their users, or do they only think they do? And when you have a deadline, how do you avoid UI slowing your progress? This talk is a case story of how UX was included in the agile development process that resulted in the first Danish mobile bank app: Danske Banks mobile banking app. “

(Janne Jul Jensen a.k.a. @jjjtrifork ~ GOTO Conference 2014)

A closer look at personas: A guide to developing the right ones (2/2)

Added on 13 August 2014 Peter Bogaards

Besides wireframes, prototypes and task maps, personas still remains one of the poster childs of UCD.

“How can designers create experiences that are custom tailored to people who are unlike themselves? As explained in part 1 of this series, an effective way to gain knowledge of, build empathy for and sharpen focus on users is to use a persona. This final part of the series will explain an effective method of creating a persona.”

(Shlomo Goltz a.k.a. @MoGoltz ~ Smashing Magazine)

Honing your research skills through ad-hoc contextual inquiry

Added on 16 July 2014 Peter Bogaards

UCD mantra: “Don’t listen to them, but watch them.”

“It’s common in our field to hear that we don’t get enough time to regularly practice all the types of research available to us, and that’s often true, given tight project deadlines and limited resources. But one form of user research – contextual inquiry – can be practiced regularly just by watching people use the things around them and asking a few questions.”

(Will Hacker a.k.a. @willhacker ~ Boxes & Arrows)

Design’s fully-baked deliverables and half-baked artifacts

Added on 10 July 2014 Peter Bogaards

Digital design cooks and pastry chefs do their magic.

“In design, we have something similar to the two states of a cake: artifacts and deliverables. If deliverables represent the fully-baked ideas in our design, artifacts represent the half-baked ones still forming. The distinction between artifacts and deliverables is very important, yet something we never find ourselves discussing, just like the multiple states of cakes. If we create one when we think we’re creating the other, it will lead to confusion that wastes time and convolutes the team’s efforts. We need to understand how they work and what makes each one valuable.”

(Jared Spool a.k.a. @jmspool ~ User Interface Engineering)

Digital government service: The fragmented experience

Added on 8 July 2014 Peter Bogaards

Government must become the new hunting ground for UX designers, as well as Health and Education. Which is Government in the broadest sense.

“Governments around the world face a set of challenges that are highly complex and interconnected: education, health, social security, and transparency to name a few. Public institutions haven’t changed much in the last couple of centuries. Their architecture, practices, processes, platforms and communication streams have remained pretty much the same. We have 18th century institutions trying to deal with 21st century problems.”

(Livework)

Crossing the great UX-Agile divide

Added on 24 June 2014 Peter Bogaards

Without conflict, friction or pain nothing moves forward.

“Every year, the UX community musters more articles, interviews, conference workshops, and panel discussions in an effort to resolve the seemingly unresolvable challenge of integrating UX into an agile process. Now more than wver, it’s important to step back from the growing body of tips, strategies and best practices, and ask why this conflict exists in the first place.”

(Mike Bulajewsk a.k.a. @mrteacup ~ UX magazine)

Marrying UCD with the Agile software development process: Seven tips for success

Added on 6 June 2014 Peter Bogaards

This theme will be vivid as long as the connection between design and engineering isn’t clear for many.

“(…) the move to Agile has left many product owners, development teams, and user experience professionals scratching their heads over the best way to incorporate user-centered design into the process while balancing the demands of an aggressive development schedule.”

(Wendy Littman ~ UsabilityGeek)

When to prototype, when to wireframe: How much fidelity can you afford?

Added on 25 April 2014 Peter Bogaards

All kinds of design documents provide you with a view of the future.

“The distinction between wireframe and prototype is almost arbitrary—both are mockups of the proposed application that differ in their fidelity to the final application. The lowest fidelity mockup has hand-drawn sketches which are quick, easy to do, and cheap. A set of black and white static layouts linked via hot zones provides a medium level of fidelity.”

(Garett Dworman ~ Usability Geek)

Treating enterprise software like game design

Added on 21 April 2014 Peter Bogaards

“Recognizing different layers and viewpoints gives game designers a nomenclature for understanding games’ inner workings and highlighting shortcomings. For example, a game aimed at a social aesthetic needs some form of multiplayer or social network integration. A game aimed at competition needs a visible score or ranking and consistent, well communicated rules.”

(Anthony Langsworth a.k.a. @alangsworth ~ Random Acts of Architecture)

The beginning of a beautiful friendship: Data and design in innovative citizen experiences

Added on 12 February 2014 Peter Bogaards
This time, the C is Citizen and not Customer. Citizens are entitled to great CXs too.

“The past decade has brought enormous and growing benefits to ordinary citizens through applications built on public data. Any release of data offers advantages to experts, such as developers and journalists, but there is a crucial common factor in the most successful open data applications for non-experts: excellent design. In fact, open data and citizen-centered design are natural partners, especially as the government 2.0 movement turns to improving service delivery and government interaction in tandem with transparency. It’s nearly impossible to design innovative citizen experiences without data, but that data will not reach its full potential without careful choices about how to aggregate, present, and enable interaction with it.”

(Cyd Harrell a.k.a. @cydharrell ~ Beyond Transparency)

The Lean UX Manifesto: Principle-driven design

Added on 8 January 2014 Peter Bogaards
As there is always UX, there’s always lean or fat UX.

“This all boils down to something that I call principle-driven design. As stated, some lean UX is better than none, so applying these principles as best you can will get you to customer-validated, early-failure solutions more quickly. Rules are for practitioners who don’t really know the value of this process, while principles demand wisdom and maturity. By allowing principles to drive you, you’ll find that you’re more nimble, reasonable and collaborative. Really, you’ll be overall better at getting to solutions. This will please your stakeholders and team members from other disciplines (development, visual design, business, etc.).”

(Anthony Viviano a.k.a. @anthviv ~ Smashing Magazine)

Utilizing patients in the experience design process

Added on 19 November 2013 Peter Bogaards
Contextualized version of the UCD process: Health.

“(…) there is much to be learned from typical patients as well, and observational research might be particularly favored in such cases. Unfortunately, whether you are talking about ePatients or most patients, patients continue to be the most underutilized resource in the badly needed redesign of healthcare and the patient experience.”

(Richard Anderson a.k.a. @riander)

UX theory to practice: What’s the fuss about Agile & UX?

Added on 17 October 2013 Peter Bogaards
It must be the pressure from the IT department that everybody in UX now wants Agile and Scrum.

“This post illustrates how my UX role fits within the Agile methodology at ADstruc. This process won’t necessarily work for every organization or product, but I hope it will provide some guidance for marrying product with design decisions and using your UX deliverables as ways to feed the Agile machine.”

(Eliane Kabkab a.k.a. @elianek ~ ADstruc)

Nine rules for running productive design critiques

Added on 11 October 2013 Peter Bogaards
Feedback and critique for design professionals.

“Design critiques – when a team gets together and reviews a design or a product prototype – can be painful. When people aren’t on the same page about goals and context, critiques can take a long time, they can lead to inefficient or unclear outcomes, and, let’s be honest, they can hurt feelings. But they don’t have to be that way. Here are my favorite rules to make them efficient, focused, and worthwhile.”

(Jake Knapp a.k.a. @jakek ~ Design Staff)