User Experience A Front-Seat Driver in Agile

Delivery

Creating world-class user experiences that are not only snazzy,

but gravitate to the end-user and delivered with speed, results

and built to continuously improve with each iteration

Jeffrey Koors

@AgileKoors

/jeffkoors

THINK ABOUT AN APP YOU USE ALL THE TIME

What makes you want to keep using it

• Makes Life Easier

• Easy to use in general (Intuitive)

• Serves a purpose or need

• Saves Time

• Readily informative

• Fun

• Business or Profit Reasons

• Excitement/Hype

Why do apps become irrelevant?• Doesn’t offer anything helpful

• Did not evolve to continue to meet today’s users demands/needs

• Not easy to use

• Too many bugs, crashes or issues

• Too complex

• Not very pleasing

• Outdated or Bad Data

• Not Fast/Slow Performance

• Disturbing Ads

• Lengthy Forms

What used to seem like a pipedream is upon us now

• Microchips in brain

• Wearables, Glasses

• Touch surfaces

• Robotics, AI driven Robotic Surgeries

• Big Data everywhere

• Voice Recognition

• Artificial Intelligence

• Augmented, Virtual & Hologram Reality

• Machines that think for you

• Everything connected through cloud

• Will you even need a computer as we know them today?

Internet of ThingsMore like Internet Overloaded with Things

Some facts on what happens per minute:

• 469,445 Facebook Likes

• 24,880,887 emails sent

• Amazon processes $3,400 worth of transactions

• 28,935 Instagram Likes

• 54,319 Google Searches

• 7,203 Tweets

Modern Tech is about PRODUCTS & FEATURES

• Products MUST evolve, end users evolving

• Focus on next gen, not current gen

• Competitors advancing technology (like the space race)

• Users give feedback, feedback comes back to dev, iteration occurs

• Using empirical data and user behavior

• Ultimately, how do we make life better for you!!

What is User ExperienceThe overall experience of a person using a product such as a website or computer application, especially in terms of how easy or pleasing it is to use.

“if a website or app degrades the user experience too much, people will simply stay away”~Google Dictionary

How do we get UX well integratedinto Agile frameworks?

For Speed – For Innovation – For Success

Courtesy of LeanUX

3 Things To Consider

1. Effort to produce a visual illustration

2. Maturity Assessment

3. What approach will fit best with answers to 1 & 2

Nailing the Nomenclature…

• Wireframes

• Sketches

• Mockups• Low fidelity• High fidelity

• Prototypes• Low Fidelity• High Fidelity

• Working Prototype

The Wireframe

The Sketch

The Low Fidelity Mock

The High Fidelity Mock

Low Fidelity Prototype

High Fidelity Prototype

The Working Prototype

Prototype

INTERACT

FIDELITY: HIGHSHOW: VISUALIZE CONTENT, ENGAGEMENT, MOTION, USESUSE: TEST USER INTERACTION, GATHER FEEDBACK, SALES, BUY-INANALOG: USE FUNCTIONALITYHOW: BALSALMIQ, INVISION, XD

Next – Agile Maturity Assessment

How mature is your org

• Team composition

• Dogma, politics, fiefdoms and bureaucracy

• Big project, Big release mindset

• Iron Triangle

• Functional Management Agile Support

• Hierarchical Management – layers

• Sales and Marketing Agile maturity

Slide image courtesy of Office Space

How mature is your team – it starts with roles

• UX designer and UX management

• The Development Team

• The Product Owner

• The Scrum Master

• The Chemistry when put together

TrapWhen internal resources, management and stakeholders think they know what every end user wants and tries to design, prototype and build for it.

How to avoid this

• MVP out to end users quick

• Prototype quickly, low-fidelity ahead and present to end users

• Focus groups and questionnaires

• Pilot programs – Beta releasing

• Internal Alpha testing

• Empirical Data

• Hack-a-thon

• Call Center feedback

• Recent historical end user surveys

• An on site dev session – Flash Mob Programming

• Random Use Case Tests

Some perfected approachesProven to work based upon maturity

Google Perfected – The Design Sprint• Design Sprint = “The sprint is a five-day process for answering critical

business questions through design, prototyping, and testing ideas with customers.”

• Unpack, Sketch, Decide, Prototype, Test

• 1 week for all of this

• Everyone involved

• Dev confidence is high

Rolling Wave

• UX injects into last half of sprint – collaborate

• Dev starts 1st half next sprint

• UX reviews collaborates withDev in that 1st half

• Test, Review

• Repeat

Agile UX Begins Agile UX Begins Agile UX Begins Agile UX Begins

Segmented, Swarm 3-week Sprint Approach

• 1st week design, discovery, UX, Dev collaboration

• 2nd week Dev focus, UX review and fine tune

• 3rd week QA focus with dev killing bugs, UX tightening up• UX moves ahead slightly focusing on next sprint

• Dev focused on collaborating with QA to nail down experience

• Deliver solid, quality product

All-4-1; 1-4-All

• Team given problem, vision or concept

• Team immediately gets to work with blank canvas

• By end of sprint, they have working increment

• Like a Black-Ops Team

Kanban UX Feeds into Dev

• Done when ready to pull

• Moves as fast as its slowest constraint

• Highly visible in motion

• Collaboration loss

• Everyone has insight into UX’s Kanban board & priorities

To Do Concept Design Feedback Prototype Test Done

Team 1 Team 2 Team 3 Team 4 Team 5

Team 1

Team 1

Team 1Team 2

Team 2

Team 2

Team 3

Team 3

Team 3 Team 3Team 4

Team 4

Team 5 Team 5

Team 5

Lean UX

Summary

• Know your visual effort

• Understand limits of or extents of maturity

• Understand team chemistry & interpersonal aptitude

• Determine your tooling

• Find an approach to start with

• Try, Inspect, Adapt – fine tune

Tool Recommendations

• Wireframing, Sketching, Low-Fidelity Mocks & Prototypes• Whiteboard, paper, napkin

• Sketchbook Pro

• Omnigraffle

• Axure

• Visio

• InDesign

• Balsalmiq

Tool Recommendations

• End-2-End, High-Fidelity Mocks & Prototypes• Adobe XD• Sketch 3• Adobe Photoshop• InVision

• Data and Analytics• PiWik• Ominture• Splunk• Google Analytics

• AB Testing and Click, Mouse Tracking• Optimizely• Clicktale

Q&A