Agile UCD

[michelle.dsouza at utoronto.ca]

Hi everyone,

I attended a couple of Agile UCD events and thought I'd share.

First I went to an Agile/UX panel put on by XP Toronto and IXDA
Toronto: http://www.ixda.org/discuss.php?post=37245

It was a very positive and interesting evening. One of the panel
members, Desiree Sy, was able to give real world examples of how the
two process can meld with very good results. One point that stood out
for me was the amount that she (as a designer) worked with developers.
She mentioned that there are two phases that her designs go through.
Background work and initial design and implementation. During the
first phase, she meets with developers at least once a week to go
over the goals of the design and where she's at with her thinking.
This way she can get quick feedback about technical difficulty and
also ideas from the developers for possible alternatives. During the
implementation phase she makes sure she checks in with developers
every day. She looks at what has been implemented and is able to
clarify points in the design and even refine the design. She stresses
that this has been a huge win for her because not only do her designs
make it into production - they get into the current production
release.

Here is an article from her:
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1358628.1358951

Another point that was made by the panel is that when we remove some
forms of communication, like large documents and specs, we must
replace them with other forms of communication. This means inserting
ourselves into each other's processes. In our case, developers and
test plan writers should go to design walkthrough meetings and
designers should be involved during the implementation and testing
phases of their designs.

I also attended the Thoughtworks Technology Briefing
http://www.thoughtworks.com/what-we-say/events/tech-briefing_ca.html which
will be up on infoQ http://www.infoq.com/

Here are a couple of articles that were mentioned there:

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/agile-methods.html
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/gettingrealaboutagiledesign/

And Thoughtworks has a new testing tool but unfortunately it
costs.http://studios.thoughtworks.com/twist-agile-test-automation/


Michelle