Agile is from Mars Usability is from Venus -...

Agile is from MarsUsability is from Venus

Teale Shapcott

Brisbane Agile Academy MeetupFebruary 9th, 2010

Teale ShapcottSystems Analyst (Usability)Business TechnologySuncorp

@teale

http://au.linkedin.com/in/shapcott

http://www.tigera.com.au

http://www.tigera.com.au

The last guy who did not like my presentation…

• Supplier of banking, insurance & wealth management products to over 7 million customers.

• Australia’s 6th largest bank, 2nd

largest domestic insurance group with 16,000 staff.

• 450 offices, branches & agencies throughout Australia & New Zealand.

• Recognised brands: AAMI, APIA, Shannons, Vero, Asteron, Tyndall & GIO

TACTICAL STRATEGY

Delivering Funded Projects Designing future product & Service Experiences

Design Research

Personas & Mental Models

Expert Evaluations

Pro

ject Fo

cusse

d

Activitie

s

Interface Coding Standards

UI Guidelines / Design Patterns

Stand

ards

Gu

ide

line

s

Workshops & Training

Evangelising Usability

Defining Tools & ProcessesTechnical Playground

Trend & Tech Research

Practice

Re

lated

Activitie

s

usability myths & misconceptions“ usability would be nice, but we don’t have time

and it costs too much ”

“ usability testing is the same as UAT system testing ..”

“usability can be achieved by following standards, style guides & design rules..”

“we can’t involve the users in the design because theywill change the functionality & scope of the project..”

“ user interface is just a façadeto the finished application…”

“ users can always just tell you what they want…”

Agile is here to stay. The economic difficulties of the past months have finally put waterfall out of its misery; now more than ever, long requirements phases and vaporous up-front documentation aren’t acceptable.

Cennydd Bowles Getting Real about Agile Design

A List Apart, Dec 2, 2008

“

”

End User Focus Customer Focusvs

Upfront Design Incremental Designvs

Conceptual Prototyping Working Prototypesvs

Implementation Independence

ImplementationDependencevs

Tension is in the air…

Scoring goals with shared values

People centric values

Iterative Design values

Iterative Design Incremental Designvs

Creative values

Delivery values

Be an Agile Usability Tribal Leader…

(don’t forget the big stick!)---------

CONCEPT INITIATE DELIVER DEPLOY

Approx 1 week Approx. 2-4 weeks 2 weeks per Iteration Approx. 2 weeks

Aim: Identifying a technical solution at a reasonable cost.

Refines & validates the solution.

Concept documentation reviewed and refined providing a solid foundation for development.

Ongoing Iterative development of working software.

Refinement & adaptation of plans from initiate.

Rapid and secure transition to the production environment.

Deliverables: • Focusing Question• Business Benefits• Cost Benefits Analysis• Success Sliders

• Risk Assessments• Issues Register• Value Stream Mapping• Story Card Identification• Story Card Prioritisation• Story Card Estimation• Release Planning

• Provision of infrastructure for software production.• Development & delivery of high quality working software.

• Quick & secure deployment of developed software into production or other required environments.

Business Value Generation & Risk Mitigation

www.poetpainter.com

• Promotes understanding context as it relates to experiences• Highlights inadequacies of pure focus on users, tasks & business goals• Provides direction for various UX activities and tasks• Allows integration of marketing & design research into technology efforts• Enhances ‘user experience’ by acknowledging motivations & non-task focussed

goals. • Represents business & technology contexts that enable experience design work.

A useful, usable & compelling

design is a balance between

Customer Goals & End User Goals

Customer

goalsEnd user

goals

Modelling(scenarios, personas)

FIXED

FLEXIBLE

FIXED

FLEXIBLE

FIXED

FLEXIBLE

FIXED

FLEXIBLE

FIXED

FLEXIBLE

FIXED

FLEXIBLE

Scope Cost Time Quality Users Team

Evaluate Concept PhaseShould the project continue to Initiate?

Is there further research to be done? Is the solution feasible?

Customer goals

End usergoals

Modelling(scenarios,

personas)

INVEST (Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small, Testable)

Should Have Could Have Won’t HaveMust Have

prioritising high-level story cards

Evaluate Initiate PhaseAssess risks & issues – what will be the

impacts, have the sliders changed?Is it still feasible to continue?

parallel track development

low cost

moderate cost

high cost

NecessityWhat are the minimal characteristics of the feature?

FlexibilityHow can the feature be more useful in other situations

Error RecoveryIs this feature safe to use in terms of error recovery?

Performance What will make this feature more desirable to use?

managing feature scale

Usability Testing

This is a recall test

You have 5 seconds

Look at the following screenshot

Please write down 5 things that you

remember about the last screenshot

resources for usability testing

http://fivesecondtest.com/TechSmith Morae - $1495.00

Handbook of

Usability Testing(Wiley.com or Amazon)

Approx: $99.00

tonight’s takeaways…• Employ agile usability by minimising differences &

leveraging core values.• Practice JIT research with a PAC Analysis, this will assist with

planning usability activities during the project. • Seek to learn about users motivations & goals with a needs

analysis survey. • Develop personas to conceptually model interactions with

scenarios, storyboards & flow diagrams. • Use low fidelity wireframes for screen designs• Create HTML prototypes of your interface & use as a specification during development / delivery.• Use iterations & parallel track development to chunk detailed design work• Look patterns in behaviour during usability testing • Become an Agile Usability Tribe leader!