Making Faster UX in an Agile World - HOAPitt 2017

Heart of Agile
Pittsburgh, PA
April 28, 2017
Carol Smith
@carologic
Making Faster UX
in an Agile World

IBM Watson / #HOAPITT / @carologic / April 28, 2017
Arguments Against UX/Design
• User Experience (UX) work is slow!
• Design is indecisive - make up your mind!
• Dev is always wrong!

"The biggest waste of all
is building something
no one wants"
- @ericries #LeanStartupMI via @MelBugai

Shared Values between UX and Agile
• Users and interactions
– Not individual customers
• Working software
• User collaboration
– Not customer specific
– Usability testing with users
• Responding to change

Design at IBM Watson

Goals of UX
• Everyone understands users
• Solve problems with simplest solution
• Encourage collaborations
• Think ahead

Increased understanding of users
• Who are they?
• Needs and goals?
• Problems they are trying to solve?
• Latent needs?
• Language/acronyms used?

Goal is not to hit a nail
Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hammer-lever_diagram.jpg

Goal is to build…

Users goals are not…
• Logging in
• Clicking next
• Uploading docs
• Filling out a form
• Solve their problem – as simply as possible

Encourage Collaborations
• How can we approach this problem together?

Think ahead to solve problems
• Big work is coming?
• Change as product matures?
• What next in product lifecycle?
Bart Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bart_Simpson

No BDUF!*
• Just enough
• Solve the problem
• Future vision
– Concept Cars
– Know the North Star
*Big Design Up Front

Shared Documents Aren’t Shared Understanding
Cartoon by Luke Barrett © Jeff Patton, all rights reserved, www.AgileProductDesign.com

Imbedding UX

Squads include UX folk
• Researcher and interaction designer on squad
– Visual designer can be shared
• Larger products
– Many squads
– Focus on user interactions
– Consult on other teams as needed (e.g. review API flow)

Designers are part of the team
• Standups/Scrums
• Planning/grooming, review, retro, demo
• Estimating work
• Take turns with Agile roles
• Design doing QA of design work
Image: http://intland.com/blog/project-management-en/tips-and-tricks-
to-make-the-most-of-your-retrospectives/

Collaborative Activities

Co-Design
• Developers, product owner/manager and designers work
together on early sketching, task analysis, etc.
• Pro’s
– All info needed – tech, business, user
– Shared understanding – saves time
– Solve problem together
• Con’s
– Time consuming; reduces time to build

Usability Testing
• Team members actively observe
– Working software or prototypes
– Goal to have less usability issues in software
– Can watch remotely
• Pro’s
– Gain empathy for users; understand struggles and what works
• Cons
– Time; Not all sessions are great (but most are!)

Visiting Customers
• Observe customers and see how they work
• Pro’s
– Major potential increase in empathy
• Con’s
– Major time investment
– Time away from coding

Keep Trying
https://www.flickr.com/photos/fireatwillrva/5823369990

Parallel-Track
Workflows
a.k.a. Staggered Sprints

Agile Design Timing: Parallel Tracks
• Developer track:
– Focus is on production code
– Whole team (including design)
• Interaction designers track
– Focus is on user contact (Dev less involved)
Slide from Tutorial: Making UX Agile and Lean at UXPA 2016 by John Schrag,
Carol Smith and Thyra Rauch http://uxpa2016.org/event/making-ux-agile-and-lean

Iteration 1

Iteration 2

And so on…

Constant Communication
• Between the two tracks - essential for success
• Not just hand-offs

Pros and Cons - Parallel/Staggered work
• Pros
– Gives UX a head start
– Lot of backend work needs to be done anyway
– Establish common vision
• Who for?
• Common “elevator statement”
• Cons
– Can lead to BDUF and Waterfall

Balancing Act
• Understand users, context, etc.
• Create personas, mental models, etc.
• Prepare for story mapping
and other sessions thoroughly
Strive for
UX Best
Practices
• Engineers need designs
to develop
• Research cannot continue forever
Meet
Production
Needs
Agile requires leaner methods
Time box and focus on outcomes

Building #UX Stories
and
Breaking down work

Story Card Progress
• Is UX Needed?
– What is the story?
– What do we know?
– What do we need to know?
• Lean UX to answer questions
– Interviews, observations, prototype testing, etc.
32
Kanban
Do Review Done

Example: Story Breakdown
• Big Story: User can move, duplicate, or remove selected text
in a document.
• Stories: Cut, Copy, Paste, Delete
– How do you order these four stories?
– Which one comes first? Why?
– Which one comes second? Why?
– Which one comes third? Why?
© Copyright 2014 Desirée Sy & John Schrag. All rights reserved.

Conversations to understand
• Relationships between stories
• Structure and hierarchy of related stories
• Functionality that is being built
• Conversations to share knowledge
• Clarify assumptions about what is to be built

User Story Mapping
• Organize user stories
into a map that
communicates experience

Represents Complexity and Size of Work
time
Refine the map and test for
completeness with the
entire team - developers,
designers, BA’s etc.

Encourage Information Radiators
• User information
• Customer journeys
• Photos from research
• Usability metrics
Photo: https://medium.com/@FBResearch/beyond-bullet-points-four-
creative-ways-to-share-research-c10fa047f025#.cdauyngei

Enable design stories
• “Problems we will find while usability testing”
• “Research to inform personas”
• “Design debt”

Integrating UX Activities

Light Design - Lean UX
• Iterative
• Repeatable
• Incremental
• Get to 80% confidence

Usability Testing is…
• Representative users
• Doing real tasks
• Being observed
• Using prototypes
or live products
• Not User Acceptance Testing
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/raphaelquinet/513351385/sizes/l/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/raphaelquinet/

Continuous Learning Benefits
• Save time & money
• Minimize human cost (users & team)
• Better UX means increased
– Usefulness
– Efficiency
– Productivity

Small scope is good
• 5-7 participants uncover
~80% of major usability problems
• Don’t try to be statistically
significant
• Diminishing returns
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000319.html
Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox. Why You Only Need to Test with 5 Users. March 19, 2000.
Number of Test Participants
Participants are representative of specific user group
and are doing representative tasks
More participants takes more time, costs more money
- means significantly diminishing return.

Include people with disabilities
• “We are all only temporarily able-bodied.
Accessibility is good for us all.”
• Know the law, build for the spirit of accessibility
– U.S. Section 508 - https://www.section508.gov/content/learn
– WCAG 2.0 - https://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/wcag.php
-@mollydotcom at #stirtrek 2011 via @carologic #a11y

Many ways to test
• Online software
– UserTesting.com (un-moderated)
– Web Meeting (moderated)
• In Person (moderated)
• Moderated is better to get to “why”
• Unmoderated is great for quick answers

Regular Testing
(Yes, this is an old idea; a great one!)

“Teams should stretch
to get work into that day’s test
and use the cadence to drive
productivity.”
Jeff Gothelf
http://blog.usabilla.com/5-effective-ways-for-usability-testing-to-play-nice-with-agile/

Test whatever is ready…
• Concepts, rough ideas, brainstorming
• Work in Progress
• Prototypes - make to learn
– Clickable (Axure, Balsamiq – code is optional)
• Websites, mobile, products, services
• Competing designs (A/B testing)
• Comparative studies
• Conduct user research

Be an Active Observer
• Offer to greet participants (in person)
• Help operate software/recording equipment
• Take notes
• Share your notes

Board/Flip Chart Notes - look for Patterns
Issue P1 P2 P3
Search Used Yes No No
Widget 1 Used N/A Used –
unsure
about
Task 1 Notes 3 – easy 2 – needed
help
3 – easy
Task 2 Notes 2 – needed
help
2 – easy 2 – needed
help
help
3 – easy Ran out of
time
help
3 – easy Ran out of
time

Make Useful & Usable
Recommendations - Quickly

True Statements
• All interfaces have usability problems
• Limited resources to fix them
• More problems than resources
• Less serious problems distract
• Intense focus on fixing most serious problems first
Adapted from: Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-It-Yourself Guide
to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems. By Steve Krug

Don’t support tree killers
Image of stack of paper:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stack_of_Copy_Paper.jpg
X Marks the Spot https://openclipart.org/detail/193050/x-marks-the-spot

Make users visible
• Everyone understand user
needs
• Solve problems in the
simplest ways
• Encourage collaborations
• Think ahead

Contact Carol Smith
in/CarolJSmith
@Carologic
slideshare.net/carologic

Resources, References, etc.

Making Faster UX in an Agile World - HOAPitt 2017

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