DigiKev » ux

Step into Agile UX

Kevin Rapley — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:05:23 +0000

At work there are a couple of projects being run in an Agile project development process. This appears to be geared towards assisting the developers in achieving the best results. I say appears to be as I am new to Agile and its processes. I haven’t had the opportunity yet to experience an Agile team first hand but have caught snippets from our UX design meetings. I have also been reading about Agile and SCRUM on Wikipedia and some members of my team have sent across useful documents and blog posts of how UX fits into an Agile environment.

I was surprised to learn that at present there are few, if any, books written on the subject of UX in an Agile environment. But this is to be solved pretty soon. Anders Ramsay is currently writing (or has written and is now in an editing stage) a book on this very subject which will be released soon. Louise Ventris, our UX Team Lead has also recommended that I grab a copy of ‘Inmates Are Running The Asylum’ by Alan Cooper. I hear this is a very good read, even if not strictly about Agile.

What would we do without Twitter? How did we get such informed and brilliant leads before? I asked the Twitterati whether they knew of any books or must read blog posts or resources on UX in an Agile environment. Miles Rochford, my mentor at the IxDA put me in touch with Johanna Kollman who he described as his Agile UX guru. Johanna told me about Anders Ramsay and also the Ning group Agile Experience Design Organisation. Nick let me know about a Yahoo! Group called Agile Usability. Ian Fenn also mentioned Anders Ramsay was writing a book and Jeff Patton is releasing one on the subject next year.

Thanks to everyone who supplied me with resources, I now have lots to study and some upcoming books to look out for. My Agile UX bookmarks are tagged with ‘agileux’ in Delicious.

A UX perspective on Dubai

Kevin Rapley — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 08:06:17 +0000

I have returned from a week’s vacation in Dubai visiting my sister-in-law and brother-in-law with my wife. It was a mind blowing experience seeing such a young, yet highly developed city rising out of the deserts of the United Arab Emirates. Dubai has adopted a ‘no-holds-barred’ approach to architecture where seemingly structures and buildings rise out of the sea on reclaimed land. What I found fascinating and completely different to any other city I have visited is how Dubai groups and labels alike businesses, institutions and amenities. For instance, if I were to be visiting the offices of a local or international newspaper then I would be heading for Media City where I could find them all in the same locale. We drove past Internet City which housed side-by-side no less than Microsoft, Hewlett Packard Invent, Cisco, Oracle, 3M et al. I also spotted Festival City as well as a number of other areas either named City or Village.

Taking a UX viewpoint, this makes a lot of sense. Both local inhabitants and visitors of Dubai can orientate themselves quickly and easily in relation to these landmarks. If they are looking for something specific which is housed by one of these area taxonomies, they not only experience the brand of choice but also related brands as well as those in direct competition. You can imagine how this grouping would work on a website. Choosing a top level navigation item labelled Internet Businesses would allow you to arrive at a page which offers the entire Internet based companies within the area. An aside column could present businesses which are related to the Internet based companies such as electronic device manufacturers. If I were to select a Microsoft specific page the aside column could then reflect both competitive businesses and related industries. The experience and user journeys available are far improved when you can see exactly which companies are housed within the area and how they relate to one another.

I can see how complimentary businesses can offer an overall better experience to customers and businesses alike. But, it would be interesting to explore and know how those companies in direct competition work together living in such proximity. Does it create a sense of community where knowledge share is ubiquitous? Or, does it make them work harder to establish themselves as the thought leaders in a big game of cat and mouse?

Iterative process and the need for play making in design

Kevin Rapley — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 21:57:55 +0000

Traci Lepore has just written her article Putting Together a Production: A Rehearsal Strategy for Design for UX Matters. Intelligently, in a captivating and easy to follow manner she likens design iterations and the need for an iterative process to her own personal accounts of being an actress. She has to learn the lines while getting over her own shyness and discomforts in order to work through the initial stages of what is required of her. Soon the shyness disappears and the acting refined over several iterations. The iterations are play making, trying out new ideas and discarding those that fail. This creative space for trial and error is essential to the refinement of the final play. This cycle, as she depicts through flow diagrams, is a helical process rather than linear. The steps in taking on board what is required, learning the script and refinement of acting are completed over several iterations, it is then up to the director and audience to judge.

Too often project scope constrains a linear process on web design. Qualitative and quantitive market research results are outputted to persona creation. Persona creation in turn output to user journeys and flows. User journeys and flows develop site maps and wireframes. Wireframes become prototypes and design scamps. Before we know it, the website is coded and pushed live. Let us just break this linear approach. Let us iterate the design processes and not be scared to revisit a step and feed new ideas and information back into the production. What needn’t be in the design at all? Iteration will refine and develop an idea into a solid concept.

I have been getting excited about comic prototyping recently and how it has the ability to reflect the feelings and aspirations of the end user to the client. Rather than emphasis on the interface and placing it centre of attention based on analysis, comic prototyping is end user centric. This, in my opinion opens up new design avenues. And, because the fact that what is being created is a comic, an understanding of the values, aspirations and feelings from using the interface rather than the product itself, it encourages the notion of play making. The comic prototype will never feature in the final product, the end user will never see it. There is nothing precious around the prototype and it feeds into the further iterations around the design process. I believe this is a good place to start to get the iterative process working but we must try and continue this throughout the lifecycle of the design too. But when should we stop? Until the product is at a stage where it is suitable for production? Or time and budget restraints are exhausted?