Can a user-centered design approach be integrated into an Agile Methodology?

There are many ‘agile’ development methods that have been leveraged throughout the years. It is a way to limit the traditional ‘waterfall’ approach to projects and work in an iterative approach to delivery. To put it simply it is a way to fit the software development life-cycle into a box while promoting teamwork, collaboration, and process adaptability.

Agile methods break tasks into small increments with minimal traditional planning. Iterations are short time frames (timeboxes) that typically last from two to four weeks. Each iteration involves a team working through a full software development cycle including planning, requirements analysis, design, development and testing.

The concept is that it minimizes overall risk and allows the project to adapt to changes quickly. That being said, a user-centered design approach is inherently an iterative development life-cycle. The difference is it focuses on the needs of a user to achieve their objective in the most-straightforward path possible. This focus eliminates many of the typical requirements that team sponsors dream up. By limiting the life-cycle to the user’s needs it enables a shorter timeframe for stages of the project. Working collaboratively with the end user through facilitated work sessions, wireframing and rapid prototyping it is feasible to eliminate much of the traditional project-heavy documentation and deliver a streamlined product. The difficulty isn’t in defining how to deliver within an Agile Framework, but rather making the organizational and mental changes required to break old habits and patterns.

How have you seen projects merge a user-centered design approach within an Agile Framework?

The Power of Less

The new web project starts and everyone is excited about what could be. The business stakeholders, the various project teams, the vendors, they all march to the same drum as the excitement builds. This is great. A common vision, teams that stand united and a plethora of possibilities at the forefront of everyone's minds. Then it happens. The timeline is long and budget is reasonable so all of these folks begin brainstorming on what can be built; however, they haven't investigated what needs to be built, nor do they understand for whom it is being built. 


So let's pretend for a moment this team enters into the process of understanding their audience, conducts user research, identifies personas, etc. Now they know what needs to be built. Right? The teams begin working feverishly to identify requirements, functions, features and start prioritizing based on feasibility and usability. But, the problem remains...


Days go by, then weeks, then months and still, the teams are working on requirements, holding work sessions, creating models and attempting to solidify this new web offering. What seems to escape them is the need to 'keep it simple, stupid'. I know it's not the most tactful phrase used today, but it should be at the heart of the project. The concept of simplicity gets lost. After all, offering more is better. Add this feature here and that feature there and pretty soon your concept is clouded by a bloated list of features and functions that, most likely, won't be used by anyone. 


The advice of the day is to stop building everything and start building what matters. Do you really need all the bells and whistles? It is more important to launch half the product and do it very well than trying to accomplish so much you half-ass your way through building the product. You can always add more later. Build what you can, launch what you can and watch how users engage. You can always add on after you see how your product is used. 


Have you experienced projects that focus on feature-bloat?

Does User Experience Impact a Content Management Implementation?

User Experience is typically thought of as the major activity suite impacting the 'front-end' of the web site or application; however, user experience runs much deeper than that, and, in many cases, requires the designer to take many audiences into consideration. One example that is a high priority on an organization’s punch list is the implementation or expansion of a content management system.

Enterprise Content Management Solutions (ECMS) were initially introduced to enable a business user to update content on their web site eliminating the need for technologists to be involved every time a word or sentence needed to be changed. As they evolved and matured ECMS became a means to, not only manage content, but determine content delivery, audience segmentation, adding pages, and as a result impact the usability of the site. This is really a multi-faceted challenge. To deliver an effective ECMS one must consider four facets: 1) Organization; 2) Process; 3) Delivery; 4) Technology. A user-centered design approach impacts all four facets and multiple audience segments. Many view the challenge as merely a technology-focused initiative. When evaluated more closely multiple audiences arise that are impacted by the user experience. There is the experience of the internal content managers (contributors, editors, approvers, etc.) and the experience of the end-user that consumes the information on the site, application or mobile interface. This simple example already creates the opportunity to address the needs of four different user types with different goals, tasks and overall objectives.

Whether we are delivering a solution on Interwoven, OracleUCM (Stellent) or other platforms, a user-centered design approach needs to be incorporated throughout implementation. When it comes to experience, keep it simple for users to consume.

What experiences have you seen implementing Enterprise Content Management Solutions (ECMS)?

Who is your audience?

Sounds like a simple question, but it actually doesn’t get taken into consideration enough prior to completing a Project Charter and spending valuable resources and dollars. Many corporations kick off initiatives simply based on what they think makes sense and how they expect a user would need to interact with it. Even more surprising is that these organizations don’t rely on user experience teams to determine their path and provide some insight from historical experiences, but rather let development teams run rampant and build code-focused interfaces.

Don’t get me wrong. Many organizations are beginning to value the art (and science) of user experience and building internal teams to address these needs. But all too often, it is looked at as a burden to the bottom line instead of a group that saves the company money, targets the audience correctly and recommends the most effective business solution.

I was recently facilitating a work session for a Human Resource Management Company to drive out requirements and better define the functional areas and potential feature sets. The goal was to port an application and various processes online. During this session the topic of user experience (personas, research, etc.) was raised and a number of executives in the room strongly stated there was neither the time nor need for ‘any of that’ to build the solution and go-to-market. I nodded and then asked who they were targeting and received the generic response of “our customers”. I smiled and continued to go down the path and asked how their customers currently complete the processes they were moving to the web. The room was, for the most part, silent. They were viewing the entire process from the perspective of how they could technically move processes to the web and not how the user could actually leverage the suite of tools via the processes to get the desired outcome. In the end they saw the light. We, in an expedited timeline, performed some field studies to gain a better perspective of the processes their customers actually perform and how their product could fit in. In addition, it shed additional light on the attributes of the individuals conducting the work within their customer organizations.

What experiences do you have helping customers understand the value of user experience within the software development lifecycle?

How Transition in Web Medium is Affecting Design

The ever increasing popularity of mobile applications has sent savvy Web Designers back to the drawing board. The IPhone, the Android, the Blackberry and a slew of electronic media moguls are redefining what effective Web Design means in the here and now.

Because of the rapid dissemination of mobile applications, Web Designers  are quickly revising their design principles. Below you will find three additional core principles that should be kept in mind to effectively design for the mobile environment. These are addressed in recent posts, but we believe their importance requires multiple entries. 

1) Simplicity

Due to the reduced size of the mobile screen, the design should be limited in its’ complexity. Although a website can fairly easily be ported to the mobile device, it is not usable due to the information load on your typical website. Mobile design requires a new way of looking at how a user behaves and how the experience needs to change to enable use via the interface.

2) Familiarity
Take advantage of user’s current knowledge and memory of concepts, features or symbols used throughout the web and OS interfaces today. For example, the user is familiar with a recycle bin or waste basket to delete files, maintaining this metaphor would increase the likelihood of a user inherently understanding the principle of moving items to the ‘trash’. In short, don’t rethink the wheel, just improve on it.

3) Messaging

System to User collaboration is more than merely alerts/errors. There must be constant communication between mobile applications and the user to keep the user informed of what is happening through system feedback/content delivery. In addition, the inherent functionality of a mobile device plays an instrumental part in the messaging due to voice-based applications for the iPhone.

Mobile Design and Heuristic Principles

These are ten general principles for user interface design. They are called "heuristics" because they are more in the nature of rules of thumb than specific usability guidelines. In the 90's Nielsen summarized these principles and they have been the benchmark for solid, structures UX Design.

Key Heuristic design principles are taken into account throughout a user-centered design approach; however, many UX designers tend to overlook these principles and are unable to translate similar guidelines for mobile interface design. 

With Google’s backing of HTML 5, mobile devices leveraging a mobile browser and HTML 5 rendering capabilities will be able to run web applications directly without any downloading or installation of applications. This limits the need to develop for multiple mobile platforms and enhances/changes the way mobile interface design is handled moving forward. Rather than remaining within the parameters of iPhone or Android based interface elements and placement, applications can provide a richer user experience and, in turn, should follow specific design patterns and principles. 

Various mobile design guidelines should be accounted for throughout the application life cycle. A few to keep in mind...

1. Screen size is compact

It is a challenge to design an interface for small screen sizes. Keep the focus on displaying important functionalities. Reduce the information overload found in most mobile apps and strive for an information rich application keeping the purpose of the application and direct needs of the user in mind. 

2. People see one screen at a time

Small screen sizes limit visibility to a single screen. Although modal windows are possible by opening an entirely new screen within the mobile interface, the use of modal windows is confusing to the majority of users. If the focus is on the experience and direct need of the user a multi-modal application can be avoided.

3. Don't rethink the wheel 

Use standard controls and behaviors a user is familiar with on mobile devices to minimize onscreen help. Although the access to many features and functionality are available through HTML 5, designers should be cautious of over-designing. It is still imperative mobile applications remain simple and direct. It is a very different experience to register within a My Account area via a mobile interface than a web interface. Even though the web can be duplicated for the mobile device this is rarely yields an optimal user experience.

That being said, Gartner predicts by year-end 2010, 1.2 billion people will carry handsets capable of rich, mobile commerce, providing a rich environment for the convergence of mobility and the web. This continued growth opens numerous opportunities for mobile interface design, but requires an intelligent approach to rolling out user-centered applications.