william hudson - agile user experience and ucd (workshop)

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Agile User Experience and UCD

William Hudson User Experience Strategist [email protected]

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Guerrilla UCD – The Series • Getting Started

– 0. Free Overview – 1. Guerrilla UCD Boot Camp

• Strategy Webinars – 2. Visual Design for Usability – 3. Navigation & Menu Design – 4. Designing for SEO & Accessibility – 5. Human Error, Messages & Feedback – 6. Usability Evaluation

• Tactics Webinars – 7. User-Centred IA with Card Sorting – 8. Dynamic Web Pages: Effective Use of Ajax – 9. Writing Effective Web & Intranet Content – 10. Designing for Advanced Users – 11. Persuasion, Trust and Seduction

William Hudson 2

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Guerrilla UCD – The Series • Lean & Agile Webinars

– 12. Making the Case for UCD in Agile – 13. Integrating UCD & Agile – 14. Agile UX: Users, Personas & Design Maps – 15. Agile UX: Use Cases, Stories & Scenarios – 16. Agile UX: Conceptual Models

• This course touches on many topics in GUCD

sessions 12-16 (each of those is 90 minutes)

• See www.guerrillaucd.com for more details

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http://www.guerrillaucd.com/

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Topics • Basic characteristics of Agile development • Primary differences between waterfall and Agile user

experience • Empathy gap, balanced teams and embedded user

experience roles • Empathetic design • Design decision styles and minimum viable products (MVPs) • Personas and the persona myths • User and persona stories • Integrating usability evaluation • Persuasive facilitation • Design maps

Agile UX & UCD 4

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Understanding Agile UCD

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The Need for User-centred Design • Experience has shown that we cannot establish

user requirements just by asking users what they need. Users… – are not designers – may not see the big picture – may not be aware of what it possible – may not be aware of what is changing – are not necessarily familiar with organizational needs

• Instead, what is required for interactive systems is a design approach focussed on users

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The Case for User-Centred Design • User-Centred Design aims to research and

understand the real needs of users and to produce designs that meet those needs, with the following benefits – Less frustration – Improved user experience – Better data quality – Fewer support calls – Lower development costs – Fewer legal concerns (Disability Discrimination Act) – Bridging the mass-market chasm...

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The Case for User-Centred Design

Innovators Early Adopters

Early Majority

Late Majority Laggards

The technology chasm

(Adapted from Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm and Everett Roger’s Diffusion of Innovation)

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Key Features of User-Centred Design

• Direct engagement with users: observation, research and evaluation

• Investigation and understanding of contexts of use, for example – Point of sale system for a pub versus a supermarket – Returns system for a dusty, noisy warehouse rather

than a clean and comfortable office

• Main focus of UCD is suitability of solution for real users

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Origins of Agile

• Based on the working practices at the Lockheed Skunk Works™ (see bit.ly/agile-skunkworks)

• Small teams • Close quarters • Low process overheads • No ‘big design up front’ • Focus on team motivation and working code Agile UX & UCD 12

http://bit.ly/agile-skunkworks

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Skunk_works_Logo.svg

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Small Teams?

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p communication paths for n nodes:

p = n∙(n – 1) / 2 (or p = (n2 – n) / 2)

Small Teams

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0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

180

200

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Path

s

Nodes

For a team of 5 there are 10 paths of communication

But there are 105 for a team of 15!

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The Agile Manifesto

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

• Working software over comprehensive documentation

• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

• Responding to change over following a plan

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(The manifesto and its related 12 principles can be found at www.agilemanifesto.org)

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http://www.agilemanifesto.org/

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The Agile Team

Customer / Owner / User Rep

Users ?

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The Agile-to-User Relationship • eXtreme Programming (XP) was the first new

approach to be called Agile • Various suggestions were made about how to

address user requirements – ‘Expert’ user on team (this was done in practice for

the Chrysler Comprehensive Compensation System, the first XP project, but one team member wrote of the burnout of this particular user)

– In Extreme Programming eXplained a product owner or customer would make all user-related decisions

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Typical Agile Approach (Scrum)

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(www.mountaingoatsoftware.com)

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(Image from www.buzzle.com/articles/waterfall-model-diagram.html)

Software development method proposed by Winston Royce – projects would pass through most phases at least twice

The origins of the ‘waterfall model’

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http://www.buzzle.com/articles/waterfall-model-diagram.html

Software development method as desired by project managers, coined ‘waterfall’

The origins of the ‘waterfall model’

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Origins of Scrum

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Origins of Scrum • A 1986 article in the influential Harvard Business

Revue talked about product development in terms of Rugby and ‘moving the scrum downfield’ – The New New Product Development Game

• Keys to success were seen as – moving from sequential (waterfall) working to

overlapping (iterative) approaches – giving interdisciplinary (cross/multi-functional) teams

autonomy: this is the scrum

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The New New Product Development Game

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Overlapping phases promoted in the New New Product Development G (the authors were Japanese)

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Overlapping Phases

• Overlapping phases can be seen in the iterative software development approach in use since the 1960’s and which was becoming more popular during the 1990’s

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Iterative development model from the Rational Unified Process, developed in the 1990’s (now owned by IBM)

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Scrum

• Scrum and Scrum-like approaches are now the most popular in Agile working

• But the Agile emphasis on ‘no big design up front’ has frustrated UX & UC design since they have traditionally been front-heavy

• ‘Up-front UXD’ is a natural, but unfortunate consequence

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Up-front UXD as often implemented

Up-front UXD

UX

Agile Stuff

User Testing

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Shortcomings of UF-UXD • Assumption of ‘right-first-time’

– Prototyping, mock-ups and user testing can help to address this, but limited relative to live system

• Little or no engagement with Agile team – No learning (in either direction) – No appreciation for UX activities – No involvement of UX during development

• The UX step can look like waste from a lean perspective (especially if organization has low UX maturity – customer value needs to be proven)

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Activity 1

• Organize into small groups with someone to take notes

• Await further instructions!

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The Empathy Gap

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Scrum Roles

• Roles in Agile vary according to the approach, but in Scrum there are only three: – Scrum master – Product owner – Team

• Scrum master provides project management and oversight

• Product owner represents the stakeholders • Team does the work! Agile UX & UCD 32

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Product Owner Role

Product Owner

Stakeholders

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Team Scrum Master

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The Agile-to-User Relationship

• Two main problems: 1. No one person in isolation can represent or fully

understand the needs of users • Consider this actual user quotation:

“What do you want to talk about, what we really do or what we’re supposed to do?”

2. Some team members can find it hard to

appreciate – and sometimes to understand – problems that users have (the empathy gap)

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The Empathy Gap: Empathizing/Systemizing Theory • Large-scale study of 450 IT workers (see

Hudson, William, 2009, Reduced Empathizing Skills Increase Challenges for User-Centered Design, CHI 2009 Conference, Boston and British HCI Group Conference, Cambridge)

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Empathizers

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Systemizers

RTFM Agile UX & UCD 38

(A symptom of the empathy gap)

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Technologists can have strong systemizing but reduced empathizing skills

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(There is a small effect for the few female technologists, but no ‘crossover’)

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Men Women

Systemizing

Empathizing Empathizing

Systemizing

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Impediments to UX Maturity

• Low empathy • Technology focus • Cost concerns • Featuritis • Time scales • Narrow scope

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“I don’t want it good, I want it Tuesday”

- Jack Warner

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Agile UCD Challenges

• UCD needs to be adapted to fit into an Agile framework – Fewer ‘up-front’ activities – Short cycles – Reactive (particularly in teams with low UX

maturity) • UCD practitioners also need to represent and

explain users’ needs effectively – Empathetic design – Persuasive facilitation

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Empathetic Design

• Research has found that empathy is related to specific components of the brain called mirror neurons

• They are activated when performing a task but also when seeing the same task performed by others

• To promote empathy we should rely on the adage ‘seeing is believing’

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Field Research

(Image from Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design)

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Personas

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Usability Testing

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Techsmith’s Morae (and similar) allow remote observation of usability tests

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Empathy-Assistive Technology

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Persuasive Facilitation

• Beware that empathetic techniques are not always going to be the most persuasive – Quantitative evidence will be more effective in

some cases – Persuasive facilitation requires knowing what

evidence to present to whom and when (more on this later)

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Activity 2



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Integrating Agile and UXD

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UCD Versus Agile Methods • There are some fundamental differences in the nature

of traditional versus Agile methods • Traditional methods tend to be problem-oriented while

Agile methods are solution-oriented – Problem-oriented approaches to design focus on

understanding the problem in the abstract – Solution-oriented approaches focus on concrete solutions

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Problem Solution Solution-oriented

approaches

Problem-oriented approaches

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The Problem-Solution Continuum

• In traditional Object-Oriented development much effort is devoted to software design and modeling

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Traditional OO Development

Prob

lem

Solu

tion

Use Case Models

Object Models

Other UML Models Implementation

Functional Testing

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The Problem-Solution Continuum

• In Agile methods, the approach to design can be better described as ‘just in time’

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Prob

lem

Solu

tion

Agile Development

User Stories

Design, Implementation &

Unit Testing

Functional Testing

This gap can spell trouble for users

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User Interface Design Issues • Focus is primarily on architectural modeling

and/or programming • Very little (if any) conceptual design – how the

service or product will be understood by users • No explicit user interface design • No specific user involvement • Evaluation is mostly in terms of functional testing

(does the system do what we said is was going to?)

• Usability is not a consideration

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Introducing User-Centred Design • The principles of ISO 9241-210 require:

– Investigation of the contexts of use – Active involvement of users – Multidisciplinary design – Prototyping – Evaluation of solutions

• For good user interface/interaction design we also need: – Early UI design – Focus (what the product or service is and is not) – A clear conceptual model, explained through the UI – Consistency – Empathy (developers → users)

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UCD Techniques vs Deliverables

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User Research X X X X

Personas X X X X Paper Prototyping X X X X

Usability Evaluation X X X X

Conceptual & UI Design X X X

Style Guide X X

UCD Technique

Deliverables

ISO 9241-210 UI Design

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Development Activities

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User Stories

Design, Implementation &

Unit Testing

Functional Testing

Prob

lem

Use Case Models

Object Models

Other UML Models Programming

Functional Testing

OO

Agile

User Research

Personas

Paper Prototyping

Conceptual & UI Design

(not to scale)

Usability Evaluation

Style Guide

Goal-oriented User Stories

UCD

Prob

lem

Solu

tion

Solu

tion

Traditionally, these activities are performed up front

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‘Up Front’ UX Approach User

Research

Personas

User Stories*

UX

Cycle 1 Dev Cycle n ...

Usability Testing

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?

?

* Including wireframes and prototypes if used

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‘Up Front’ UX Approach

• The up front approach presents several challenges – Excessive lead time – Big design up front is not Agile – Potentially wasted developer resources – No developer engagement with UX

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Usability Testing

Agile UX Approach

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0

0

1

UX

Dev ... Cycle 0

2

1 n 2 3

3

1 2

4

UX is always once cycle ahead and one cycle behind development

Pre-release

...

...

User Research

Scenarios, Wireframes & Prototypes

Personas & User Stories

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Agile UX Approach (Close Up)

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1 2 3

3

1 UX

Dev

Functionality for usability testing

Designs for Implementation

Evaluation

Design

Implementation

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Agile UX Approach

• Cycle 0 much shorter than ‘up front’ UX since some personas and user stories developed later

• Developers involved with UX – Observers in user research – Collaborators in personas and user stories

• Embedded UX role within development team

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Balanced Teams

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Typical Agile Approach

Original diagram from Leffingwell, Dean (2011), Agile Software Requirements, Addison-Wesley

UI/UX

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Embedded UX Role • At least one full-time UX role should be included

in every team – Adapting/tailoring organizational UI/UX guidelines for

project at hand – Part of the inception/elaboration/construction

processes – Primary collaborator on user/persona stories – Responsible for usability evaluation (possibly through

central or external resource) – Focal point for UX questions/issues/training/events

(possibly through central or external resource)

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Central UX

Resource

Project 1

Project 2

Project 3

Project 4

Each project has at least one embedded UX resource

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Central UX Resource

• Shared by project teams, provides services to embedded UX roles: – User research – User recruitment – Usability evaluation – UX training & events

• Also responsible for – Organization style guides and UX standards – UX recruitment

Agile UX & UCD 68

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User Research • In UCD we are primarily interested in what real users

do and the contexts in which they do it: – Goals and tasks – Artefacts (things they work with) – Environment (physical and organizational)

• Primary means of recording is note-taking, but… – Photocopy or photograph all artefacts – Consider audio or audio/video

recording of observation sessions

– Get prior permission to take screenshots if necessary

(See Beyer and Holtzblatt’s Contextual Design)

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Real Users – Interviews and Focus Groups

• We are also interested in what users have to say but beware of potential problems

• People… – Describe what they should do rather than what they actually do – Omit important detail, especially where it has become second

nature or if they believe it is not relevant – Provide too much detail, obscuring larger issues – Are reluctant to raise unpopular issues – Sometimes want to promote controversy – Over-generalize – Focus too narrowly on the specific issues being raised by the

interviewer’s questions • In focus groups, group dynamics also play a factor

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Users in Design • We need to identify who we are designing for

(and who we will be doing usability testing with) • While we could build profiles, we also need to get

our team thinking like and identifying with users (empathy)

• We must also design for what users really need and do (descriptive models) rather than what we think they should need and do (normative models)

• Otherwise, our user stories are works of fiction

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User Research Outcomes

• Doing user research gives us data for... – Personas – Terminology – Conceptual models

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Conceptual Models Basket Account

Departments Search

Amazon.co.uk Homepage (c. 2002)

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Conceptual Models

Amazon.co.uk Homepage (c. 2009)

Basket Account

Departments

Search

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Conceptual Models

Conceptual model for Amazon.co.uk (UML class model notation)

Department

Products

Basket Checkout

Order HistorySelected Products

Ordered Products

Order

Account

Delivery Address

Address Book

Payment Settings

Payment DetailsSearch

Product Descriptions

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Design Styles & Minimum Viable Products

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UIE’s 5 Design Decision Styles

1. Unintended – No design: can result in very poor usability and

UX 2. Self design

– Designed by team for team – Difficult for other audiences to understand/use

3. Genius design – Works well with experience teams – Does require solid practical experience of users

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syntagm Genius design can work – but not very often

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UIE’s 5 Design Decision Styles

4. Activity-focussed – Research based on users’ activities – Effective but narrow

5. User-focussed – Broad user-based research – Appropriate for green-field development and

major redesigns – Needed for excellent UX

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(See www.uie.com/articles/five_design_decision_styles)

http://www.uie.com/articles/five_design_decision_styles

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MVP – The Lean Startup

• The goal of a startup is to figure out the right thing to build − the thing customers want and will pay for as quickly as possible – Eric Ries

The Lean Startup

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(radoff.com)

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Minimum Viable Product

• Enough features to allow the product to be deployed and no more

• An alternative to extensive market research / user testing

• Popularized by Eric Reis in The Lean Startup

• But beware of the technology chasm

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Innovators Early Adopters

Early Majority

Late Majority Laggards

The technology chasm

(Adapted from Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm and Everett Roger’s Diffusion of Innovation)

Minimum Viable Product

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Personas and Persona Myths

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Users in Design • We need to identify who we are designing for

(and who we will be doing usability testing with) • While we could build profiles, we also need to get

our team thinking like and identifying with users (empathy)

• We must also design for what users really need and do (descriptive models) rather than what we think they should need and do (normative models)

• Otherwise, our user stories are works of fiction

Agile UX & UCD 86

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Personas • People are much more positive towards

individuals than groups • Personas are fictitious (but credible) individuals

who represent the main users of a solution, based on user research

• Must be developed and agreed by the team – you cannot promote empathy by forcing solutions on key players

• Personas form the basis of all discussions about features and user stories

Agile UX & UCD 87

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Psychology of Personas

• The Person-Positivity Bias (Sears, 1983) – David Sears found that attitudes towards

individuals were significantly more positive than groups with the same characteristics

• The Scope-Severity Paradox (Nordgren & McDonnell, 2010) – Nordgren and McDonnell established that

reactions to a fraud were more severe when it was presented with 3 victims rather than 30

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syntagm syntagm Agile UX & UCD Photo by James Cridland 89

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Personas

Jane Soames is a 28-year-old London graphics designer who has moved into special effects. Her experience with graphics packages has helped her a lot with the 2-D modeling but she still struggles a bit with 3-D. Her current job role has her moving between 2-D and 3-D work, so having a lot of similarities between the two kinds of software makes her life a lot simpler. …

Agile UX & UCD 90

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Persona Guidelines

• Based on user research • Typically one primary persona for a product or

service - secondary personas have minor differences from primary

• Personas must be believable and liked by team members – They should have specific characteristics (for

example, age 28, not 25-35) – Names and photos agreed by all

Agile UX & UCD 91

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8 Persona Misconceptions

1. Personas are made up 2. Personas are about demographics 3. We can use the same personas across all of our

solutions 4. Personas come from market research 5. Personas are unscientific 6. Personas are for the user experience people 7. We only need to research our personas once 8. Personas will guarantee good UX Agile UX & UCD 92

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1. Personas are made up

• The name and backstory for a persona are made up, but the behaviours and needs a persona represents have been researched in the field

Agile UX & UCD 93

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2. Personas are about demographics

• No, personas are about important behaviours and needs you have identified in your user communities

• Demographics given in the backstory are just to make the persona real

• Demographics are used in the recruitment process but these are part of the user profile behind the persona

Agile UX & UCD 94

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Persona (Front)

• A persona is the face of a user community

• But make sure that designing for this persona will not disadvantage other users

Agile UX & UCD

Age, education, experience Products/services used (how often?)

Name, specific age, realistic photo

Backstory, interests,

motivations

Goals in using your solution

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• Behind every persona is a user profile

• These are used for – Recruitment (research and

usability testing) – Sales and marketing

• They include the demographics of the user group a persona represents

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Age, education, experience (ranges)

Products/services used (how often?)

Behaviours and

recruitment questions

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Persona (Reverse)

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3. We can use the same personas across all our solutions

• Personas represent the behaviours and needs of users as they relate to the problem(s) you’re solving

• Different behaviours and needs will be relevant to different problem domains – For example many users might be interested in a

cloud music service – But their needs may be substantially different

depending on whether they prefer classical music or hard rock

Agile UX & UCD 97


Handel and Jimi Hendrix shared an address (23 Brook Street, London) but would probably have had different needs for a music service

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4. Personas come from market research

• Marketing personas can be a good starting point for design personas if they are behaviour based

• Marketing personas based primarily on demographics will not be helpful

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5. Personas are unscientific

• Personas make use of well-established principles from cognitive psychology – The Person-Positivity Bias (Sears, 1983) – The Scope-Severity Paradox (Nordgren &

McDonnell, 2010) – Decisions for Others Are More Creative Than

Decisions for the Self (Polman and Emich, 2011)

Agile UX & UCD 100

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6. Personas are for the user experience people

• The primary role of personas is to make users more real to the development team

• They will be researched and created in collaboration with UX practitioners but they need to be accepted by the whole team

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7. We only need to research our personas once

• In fast-moving domains, personas should be updated before a major refresh or new projects

• For example, the popularity of tablets significantly changed users’ needs for web site interactivity (and partially drove the rush for apps)

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8. Personas will guarantee good UX

• Not on their own. Well-researched personas, collaboratively developed (see Guerrilla UCD session 14), will help keep the focus on real users, but there are many more components – Early and frequent usability evaluations (session 6) – Persona-driven user stories (session 15) – Clear goals & conceptual model (session 16)

Agile UX & UCD 103

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Activity 3



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User Stories vs Persona Stories

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User in Design

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User stories written without user research are just wishful thinking

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User Stories

• In Agile projects user stories replace earlier forms of requirement specification (such as use cases)

• They are really placeholders – detailed design is done much closer to implementation (just-in-time design)

• For UX design, user stories need to be accompanied by prototypes (at implementation)

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User Stories

• User stories are very brief – typically a single side of a index or post card

• Large stories (called ‘epics’) should be split into more manageable chunks

• Do not get too specific on how the interaction should work in early stages (avoid premature design)

Agile UX & UCD 108

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Persona Stories

• User stories are not ideal for user experience • They’re not really about users at all; the Agile-

recommended form is – “As a <role>, I want <goal/desire> [so that…]”

• For user-centred design, stories should be about personas and avoid the first person – “Jane updates contact preferences” – (<persona> <goal/desire>)

Agile UX & UCD 109

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Persona Stories

• This form is much easier to write and read. It also emphasizes that the development team is not the user, which has benefits including – Decisions for Others Are More Creative Than

Decisions for the Self (Polman and Emich, 2011)

• See my article User Stories Don’t Help Users: Introducing Persona Stories, ACM Interactions, Nov+Dec 2013, www.personastories.com

Agile UX & UCD 110

http://www.personastories.com/

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Agile Usability Testing

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Agile Usability Testing • Early and often

– Part of each cycle, ideally weekly – Test whatever you have ready

• Don’t be afraid of remote (supervised) testing – Desktop sharing, audio & video – Recording usually easy (LiveMeeting, WebEx, GotoMeeting…)

• Consider user surrogates for brief ‘revolving door’ sessions – Colleagues not involved/familiar with the project but similar to users

in other respects • Make use of central UX or external resource for recruitment

– Time-consuming and specialist: don’t rely on team UX role • Engage the rest of the team

– Encourage live viewing (in-person or streaming video) – Make videos readily available – Organize usability/UX events around test sessions – Involve developers directly with the RITE method

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Agile Usability Testing • RITE (Rapid Iterative Testing and Evaluation)

– Michael Medlock and Dennis Wixon, Microsoft – Developers involved in usability testing and make

repairs in situ • Four categories of issue

1. Obvious cause, obvious solution that can be implemented quickly

2. Obvious cause, obvious solution but not quick 3. No obvious cause, therefore no obvious solution 4. Other factors

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Agile Usability Testing • Reported advantages of RITE

– The usability issues were “believed”. The decision-makers had often pre-defined what tasks participants should be able to accomplish. In addition, through their constant involvement the decision-makers “believed” issues for which there were no previous tasks (issues they or the usability engineer had not anticipated).

– Fixing the discovered issues was planned for and agreed upon prior to testing.

– The usability feedback was delivered as soon as it possibly could be –right after the issues occurred.

– The team had measurable assurance that the solutions were successfully fixing the problems because the fixes were tested by the subsequent participants. In addition the team caught “poor” fixes for problems and corrected them.

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(See http://tinyurl.com/RITEmethodology)

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Agile Usability Testing

• Other quick approaches – Revolving door testing with on-site proxies – Remote testing (supervised) – Paper prototyping – Card sorting & tree sorting – A/B testing

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• Persuasive facilitation requires knowing what evidence to present and when – Qualitative data often not seen as scientific – Technologists may not appreciate or understand

problems that users have – Different learning/thinking styles may favour

quantitative evidence (budgets, timings...)

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Activity 4



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• A staged approach to selling UCD may be needed, particularly in teams having low UX maturity 1. Stimulate 2. Explain 3. Engage (The ‘hook, line and sinker’ approach)

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1. Stimulate – Stimulate interest in UCD through quantitative

evidence such as server traffic analysis, support centre statistics, customer satisfaction surveys

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2. Explain – Use qualitative research to explain how to

improve usability and the user experience (usability tests, card sorting, support transcripts)

– Use ‘root cause analysis’ (or similar) to explain how identified usability issues can be addressed (RCA is a key component of quality assurance)

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(Ishikawa diagram created with free Excel tool at www.freequality.org)

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3. Engage – Engage the team in UCD techniques that build

UX into the development process (personas, paper prototypes, usability testing, design maps)

– More on design maps later

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• The extent to which persuasive facilitation is necessary will depend on the UX maturity of the team (and in some cases, individuals)

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UX Maturity Model

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(from http://johnnyholland.org/2010/04/16/planning-your-ux-strategy/)

http://johnnyholland.org/2010/04/16/planning-your-ux-strategy/








http://johnnyholland.org/wp-content/uploads/UX-maturity1.png

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The Agile Team

Customer / Owner / User Rep

Users ?

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UX/UCD-Engaged Agile Team

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UCD Practitioner

Users

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Outsourcing UX/UCD Activities

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External Supplier

Users

(Can work if supplier involves team members as observers)

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Design Maps

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Design Maps

• In their book The Persona Lifecycle, Pruitt and Adlin describe a tool called ‘design maps’

• Design maps connect personas and user stories to detailed design issues and artefacts such as wireframes, sketches and prototypes

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Design Maps

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Who • Personas • Persona-weighted feature matrix

What

• User stories (including features and constraints)

• Scenarios (elaborated stories)

How • Design maps • Design artefacts (sketches, wireframes...)

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Scenarios

• Scenarios are elaborated descriptions of user stories, usually focussed on a persona’s goal

• The can be written to represent a concept (evocative) or to describe detailed interaction (prescriptive)

• Prescriptive scenarios can be accompanied by design artefacts such as wireframes or prototypes

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(See The Persona Lifecycle for more on scenarios)

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Anatomy of a Design Map • Design Map: Megan Delivers the Presentation

Megan logs on to the presentation system

Megan sees the presenter page

Megan sees that her slides are ready and she does a last-minute flip through

Megan sees the audience members are starting to arrive

Should we let Megan log on if Ivan hasn’t set everything up yet?

The presenter screen should reassure her that the streams are started and the preso is ready

What if an audience member tries to connect before Megan, or even before Ivan?

Megan has already uploaded all of her slides

Let’s create a way for her to flip through her slides without any audience members seeing

Map Title

Step

Question

Comment Design Idea

Key step comment

question

idea

Design Map: MaryAnn finds a place to work for a few hours MaryAnn arrives at the corporate headquarters at 10:30 am.

MaryAnn knows she needs a space to work until 1 pm, and maybe after that as well.

Are there particularly busy times for hoteling check-in today?

MaryAnn has not signed up for hoteling space for today.

Let’s create a way for her to book a space ‘tentatively’ and then ask her to confirm with a mobile app!

What happens if there are absolutely no spaces left for her?

MaryAnn sees several ‘places you can work today’ options.

MaryAnn can preview the spaces using photos...and maybe see if colleagues are working nearby!

MaryAnn arrives at the space and ‘badges in...’

Slide courtesy of Tamara Adlin (see Pruitt & Adlin, The Persona Lifecycle)

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MaryAnn schedules a catered breakfast meeting


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Logical steps and actions from Design Maps go together to form single pages in a wireframe

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Collaboration Tools • Code/Defects/Project

– Atlassian: broad range including Jira & Bitbucket – Microsoft: Application Lifecycle Management – Huddle: enterprise PM collaboration – Wrike: All-in-one collaborative PM

• Visual collaboration – Conceptboard – GroupZap – Mural.ly – Stormboard

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Design map created using online visual collaboration tool (conceptboard.com)

Design Map: MaryAnn finds a place to work for a few hours

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Design map created using online visual collaboration tool (mural.ly)

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Collaboration Tools

• General – Scribblar – GotoMeeting/GotoWebinar – Adobe Connect – Webex – Microsoft Live Meeting

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Design Maps Activity

• Organize into teams of 3-5 • Await further instructions!

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Appendix

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Number of Times Methods Used Per Year

Survey of 217 participants in Usability Week 2008 (Courtesy of Kara Pernice, NN/g)

15.2 Server traffic log analysis 11.0 Search log analysis

4.1 User testing 3.3 Surveys 3.3 Heuristic evaluation / expert review 2.9 Low-fidelity/paper prototyping 2.5 Participatory design 2.2 Measurement studies 2.1 Remote testing 2.1 Field studies 2.0 Card sorting 1.5 Competitive studies 1.4 A/B testing 1.0 Eyetracking 0.8 Diary study

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Bibliography and Further Reading

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Bibliography and Further Reading • Agile Software Development

– Cockburn, A. (2002). Agile software development: software through people, Addison Wesley.

– Cohn, M. (2009). Succeeding with Agile: Software Development Using Scrum, Addison Wesley.

• Agile UCD – Nodder, C. N., Jakob (2009). Agile Usability: Best

Practices for User Experience on Agile Development Projects, NN/g (www.nngroup.com/reports/agile/)

– Sy, D. (2007). "Adapting usability investigations for agile user-centered design." Journal of usability Studies, 2(3): 112–132.

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• Contextual Design – Beyer, H. and K. Holtzblatt (1998). Contextual Design:

Defining Customer-Centered Systems. San Francisco, CA, Morgan Kaufmann.

– Holtzblatt, K., J. Wendell, et al. (2005). Rapid contextual design: a how-to guide to key techniques for user-centered design, Morgan Kaufmann.

• Design Maps – Pruitt, J. and T. Adlin (2006). The persona lifecycle:

keeping people in mind throughout product design, Morgan Kaufmann.

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• Empathizing/Systemizing – Baron-Cohen, S. (2008). Autism and Asperger

Syndrome (The Facts), Oxford University Press. – Hudson, W. (2009). Reduced empathizing skills

increase challenges for user-centered design, ACM.

– Wray, S. (2007). SQ Minus EQ can Predict Programming Aptitude, PPIG.

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• Personas – Pruitt, J. and T. Adlin (2006). The persona lifecycle:

keeping people in mind throughout product design, Morgan Kaufmann.

– Goodwin, K. (2009). Designing for the Digital Age: How to Create Human-Centered Products and Services, John Wiley & Sons.

• Qualitative Research – Kvale, S. (1994). "Ten standard objections to

qualitative research interviews." Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 25(2): 147-173.

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• User Stories – Cohn, M. (2004). User Stories Applied: For Agile

Software Development, Addison Wesley.

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www.syntagm.co.uk/design

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