From a talk that I gave on collaborative design in an agile environment

1. Collaborative user experience design
in agile development
Anu Ramaswamy (anu@empaticasystems.com)
Empatica Systems!
Facilitating Collaborative Design

2. Create a shared understanding of the user
-­‐ It
helps
to
create
visual
models
of
users
and
share
them
across
team
members
in
all
loca4ons
-­‐ When
offshoring
product
development
ensure
that
you
create
an
empathy
for
the
user
in
the
offshore
team

3. Use internal releases to validate User Journeys
-­‐ Visualize
evolu4on
of
the
user
interface
across
mul4ple
internal
releases
-­‐ Storyboard
the
user
experience
once
every
2-­‐3
itera4ons
(4
to
6
weeks),
and
showcase
the
user
journey
in
those
itera4ons

4. Collaboratively sketch the interactions
-­‐ Use
collabora4ve
design
sessions
(like
collabora4ve
sketching)
as
oKen
as
you
can–
try
to
include
both
users
and
developers
while
sketching
-­‐ Sketch
interac4ons,
not
user
stories

5. Validate key design guidelines with mockups
Hi-­‐fi
mockups
can
help,
but,
for
limited
purposes:
-­‐ To
establish
UI
paQerns
for
global
naviga4on
elements
early
in
the
project
-­‐ As
a
basis
for
valida4ng
UI
architecture
-­‐ Assessing
the
need
for
Let’s not get too attached to
visual
assets
this thing though!

6. Do RITE with lo-fi prototypes to keep up!
-­‐ Quickly
steer
away
Tools that do the trick
from
high
fidelity
prototyping
to
enable
Rapid
Itera4ve
Tes4ng
and
Evalua4on
of
design
-­‐ The
only
design
that
maQers
from
now
on
is
the
one
in
the
real
product!

7. Get religious about usability testing
-­‐ You
only
need
3-­‐5
people
tes4ng
every
itera4on
-­‐ Hallway
tes4ng,
guerilla
tes4ng,
remote
tes4ng,
anything
is
beQer
than
nothing
-­‐ Broadcast
usability
test
session
recordings
and
results
to
the
team
–
upload
videos
and
results
for
offshore
teams
to
see

8. Practice Pull – with team and with users
q Design decisions
made between q Designs built
designers and collaboratively
stakeholders with users and
developers
q Mockups that
are difficult to q Designs that are
update easy to update
q Tolerance to q Usability testing
lack of usability becomes a
testing culture
q Visual design q Visual design
show cases too elements
early in the layered in at
project the right time