7 Tips
for Practicing UX
in an Agile Environment
Jonathan Berger, Pivotal Labs, September 2011
The plan:
45 minutes
(20 minute talk + time for discussion)
What it says on the tin:
Jonathan will lead a discussion about various strategies of integrating UX practice and Agile Development, talk about pacing and mock-up techniques, and share his experience with three years of Pivotal-Tracker-oriented Test-Driven Development at Pivotal Labs.
Origin Story
Why am I here?
Why have I spent the last three years doing Pivotal-Tracker-oriented Test-Driven Development at Pivotal Labs?
It started with
Spot.us
I saw what the
Agile process did for Devs
and I thought
Designers can haz?!
I believe that design tasks have similar problems to those which that led to Agile development, and can benefit from similar techniques.
I'll test this hypothesis by sharing some tactics and listening to whether they resonate with this group.
Tips & Techniques & Tactics
& other 'T' words
Tip 1: Designers should
Talk at Stand up
- Makers are pigs too. Makers talk.
- Stand-ups should be rigorously high-orthodox.
- You can have more than 1 stand-up per day.
Tip 2: Use Ubiquitous language
Label mock-ups and assets
Use the same terms for the same things
Tip 3: Pick a story
and Stick with it
It's really effective to develop a default sample story and use it to mock or test or teach.
Stick to your story
Tip 4: Optimize Physical Spaces for Conversation
Foamcore is awesome. Create spaces to create conversation. Externalize.
Mocks on Foamcore
Foamcore == Mobile walls!!
Tip 5: Humans are narrative creatures
Design for Narrative
- Real and internally consistent test stories lead to better products.
- Bring your Personae and User Flows into tests.
- Make it easy for devs to use that research (post paper copies).
Tip 5: Personas are more memorable
with alliterative names
- Frank the Farmer
- Bennie the Butcher
- Sam the Shopper
Post basic Userflow scripts as test data
Tip 5: At first
Design in Adobe Creative Suite
- Before working software is built,
- for most IA and User Flows,
- for novel interactions
Tip 5: Unless you can
Design on a Whiteboard
- Because that's usually faster
- And faster's often better
- And whiteboards are conversationsal
Tip 5: I can't count
That '7 Tips' thing? Total lie!
Tip 9: Maintain
A sustainable pace.
Play
Rest
Remember you're a Mammal
Bonus Tip!
Tip 10: Then,
Design in the Browser
When working software exists and your mocks start falling out of sync
Use Firebug
to manipulate the DOM
and then take screenshots
which can be hacked up
in your favorite raster editor
LIVE DEMO (time permitting)
Who's wants to deface something?
this technique lets you
move FAST
for bonus points
Save the HTML
and check it into version control to work on longer mocks and be able to save them
My Open Questions:
- What are your tips?
Find me at
jonathanpberger@
pivotallabs.com, gmail.com, twitter, forrst, flickr, etc...