Designing with Agile Workshop (Half Day)

@ANDERSRAMSAY / DESIGNINGWITHAGILE.COM #IASUMMIT / MAR 21 2012

Designing with AgileFast, Effective Methods that Work


Overview- Intro (10m)

- Teams/Workshop Project (5m)

- Workshop (80m)

- Break ~10:30 (20m)

- Workshop (100m)

- Retrospective (~20m)


Who’s here?



Traditional Relay Race- Team members run alone.

- Collaboration is not built into the game.


Agile Rugby Game- Intensive and continuous collaboration is core to the game.

- Win the UX game by understanding how to move on an Agile playing field.


A Relay Race Meeting- Not designed for collaboration.

- Slow debugging of issues, differences in understanding.

What About…?

But I Thought…

Whaa…?

Our top goal is to…but what’s most important is that we…tho what we really must do is to…


A Rugby Game Meeting Workshop- An intensive passing game across roles/perspectives.

- Rapidly iterating toward shared understanding.

- Cardstorming

- Collaborative Chartering

- Design Studio

- Dotvoting

- Ideation Clearinghouse

- Paired Interviews

- Product Box

- Provisional Personas

- Speed Boat

- Story Mapping

and many more...


Learning to Play UX RugbyCollaboration-centered design, a shift toward a facilitator skillset.


An Agile UX Project Pattern

Capture Problems, Goals

I often mistak

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se…I want users to feel confident about their choice…

Explore Solutions

Product Road Map

Designing while Building


An intensive passing game

Make

Test

Learn

From Convo

to Code


Teams- 4-6 per team.

- 1 product owner


Our Sample ProjectA Donator App for a Children’s Charity

Providing education and shelter for abandoned and orphaned children around the world.

(a real charity I’ve worked with)


Business Goals- Convince visitors to make a donation.

- Persuade visitors to donate a little more than intended.

- Make visitors feel confident the donation is going toward actual cause.

- Motivate visitors to tell others to donate.

Target Audience: You(for workshop purposes only)




I often mistak

enly

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Explore Solutions

Product Road Map



Paired Interviews- Applying pairing to user research.

- Quickly capture data from many users.

@ANDERSRAMSAY DESIGNINGWITHAGILE.COM #IASUMMIT MAR 21 2012

Paired Interviews- Be sure each person has a chance

to interview the other.- Capture each key point on a

separate sticky.- Capture as many stickies as

possible.


Provisional Personas- Continue to evolve with our understanding of our users.

- Team participation facilitates user empathy.

Barb, 54* Has been proofing manuscripts w/ red pen for almost 30 years and has no interest in doing it any other way.* Knows MS Word inside and out: “I help others in the office use it.”* Still struggles with using email.* Bristles at being told she is not computer literate: “I stay in touch with my grandkids using Facebook, so there.”


Experience Mapping- Uncover and prioritize user needs and desires.

- Based on the “Speed Boat” Innovation Game.


X-Mapping Pattern1. Establish Goals/Focus.2. Generate raw materials (eg with

Cardstorming)3. Self-organized mapping. (Can do

in pairs.)4. Circle and title item clusters.5. Prioritize (eg w/Dot-Voting)


Dot-voting- Quickly captures trending

opinions.- 3-5 dots per participant.- Use markers or stickie dots.- Voters can distribute dots any

way they want.- Everyone votes at once.




I often mistak

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Explore Solutions


Design Studio- Tapping into the whole team’s knowledge and imagination.

- Can be used for research or actual design.

- Three variants: Divergent, Convergent, Ad-Hoc


A Design Studio Pattern

Focus/Boundaries

Warmup/ Raw Materials

Sketching Timebox Critique


Cardstorming- 3-5 minute timebox. - Warms up brain and hands.- Each participant writes as many

features they can think of on separate stickies.

- Becomes a feature palette for sketching.


Sketching Timebox- 5m timebox.- Everyone sketches.- No rules.- If conducting with general

stakeholders, clarify that this is research, not design.

- If conducting with the internal team, the UI concepts can be the basis for the actual design.

Critique- 2m round-robin, then open crit.- Take careful notes, attach to the

respective sketches.- Look for and work to resolve

vision differences.- (Optional) Dot-vote to uncover

trending solutions.





I often mistak

enly

order the

wrong

part, becau


Explore Solutions

Product Road Map


Uncovering a Product Road Map

Storymapping

Estimating

UI Exploration

Product Road Map


Product Road Map and MVP- Designing releases, uncovering a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

- Many ways to slice and dice.

- First release often hardest.


MVP Strategies- Painkiller

Fastest/Cheapest way to remove user pain.

- Fa$t MoneyFastest path to revenue.

- Go Ugly EarlyScrew the UX, just make it work.

- Fake It ‘til You Make ItCreate fake features to capture metrics and validate your idea.

There is no one right way.


Storymapping

Attract Convert Transact Upsell


The thinnest horizontal sliceAttract Convert Transact Upsell

R1


Storymapping and UI...Directory Purchasing Fulfillment Support

Do we have all the all the stories?

Are they even the right stories?

How do they map to the user interface?


UX Stories vs Dev Stories...

“Tell me about your problem or goal.”A UX Story. Often emotional, not easily estimable, testable, etc.

I often order the wrong part, because the part numbering system is confusing. It wastes time and makes me look stupid in front of customers!

As an auto sales rep, I want to search for parts visually, so I can be sure I’m ordering the right part.

“Tell me what to build.”A Dev Story. Can be estimated, sized, tested.


Those who need a document should participate in creating it.—Ancient Agile Proverb


UX Storymapping1.Lay out a complete user flow.2.Create a story map backbone. 3.Explore the thinnest horizontal

UI slice. (What features can be simpler/removed for the MVP Missing features? Add a sticky.)

4.Work with the “Dev” on extracting cards from the UI to add to the storymap.


UX Storymapping ExampleAttract Transact Upsell Share

Static Landing Page

“Donator-meter”

Process credit card payments

Make payment via SMS


The UX of Estimating

- Be sure estimate is informed by UI Exploration.

- Be present, prepared to speak up and negotiate.

- Understand the estimation units (e.g. points)

Photo: ryanendres.blogspot.com




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Explore Solutions

Product Road Map




- Supporting the current sprint- Preparing for the next sprint- Learning from the previous

sprint.- More about logistics than design.


Automating Collaboration with Cadences- Apply Agile approach to planning to ensure that whole team is designing together.

- Can also be applied to field research, usability testing and other UX activities.


Micro-Sprints- Self-organize into UX/”Dev”/PO- Create paper prototypes that

allow for completing the donation process.

- I’ll initiate “User Fridays” cadences.

- Ask users how much they’d be willing to donate and track your donation and upsell totals.

Showcase


Done vs ValidatedDone - a tool for helping teams make decisions and move forward.Can we decide that this task is done and move on to the next thing?

Validated - a measurement of design value.Was this idea as good as we thought it was?


Retrospective- Enabling continual learning and improvement.

- Start with results from the last retrospective.

- What worked? Didn’t work? What didn’t make sense?



Thanks!@andersramsay

andersramsay.com

designingwithagile.com