Agile-User Experience Design: With or Without a Usability Expert in the Team?

Agile-User Experience Design:

With or Without a Usability Expert in the

Team?

Lou Schwartz

Work in progress

ICSEA 2013

Agenda

1. Literature review – Usability expert(s) involvement in Agile-UX

2. Research question

3. Experiments

• With/without usability expert

4. Conclusion

Agile-UX: with or without a usability expert? -- Lou Schwartz 2

UCD expert(s) involvement in Agile-UX

A parallel team of several UCD experts

• Most of the experiments

• Several types of integration

• By spike not peaceful over the long term

• Occasional involvement, only to answer some questions

• UCD experts available throughout the project “on the call” not possible if he

works on several projects

• No planning

• Parallel tracks organization of work

• designers work with 1 or 2 iterations ahead of developers

• Several designers needed amount of work + designer should not be the tester

Armitage – Chamberlain – Ferreira – McInerney – Nelson – Nodder – Sy

3Agile-UX: with or without a usability expert? -- Lou Schwartz


1 UCD expert

• Few experiments

• Often he plays also the product owner role

Ferreira – McInerney – Schwartz



UCD expert as product owner

• Product owner responsibilities are near from the UCD

responsibilities and skills

• Often Product owners have not the skills to conduct methods

to address their responsibilities

Product owner responsibilities

Define features of the product

Responsible of the value of the product

Prioritize features

Can change priorities

Accept or reject work done

UCD expert answers

Gather data on users, context and tasks

Context studies taken into account needs of the organization

Prioritization is based on users

Based on new analysis results or on users’ feedback

Based on evaluation methods like users tests

Ferreira – McInerney – Nelson – Singh – Sy


No UCD experts

Team members as responsible of the UCD process

Ferreira – McInerney


Research question

Why involve a UCD expert in Agile-UX?

Indeed Agile prefers generalists than specialists

In this logic, UCD should be supported by the team & product

owner

… But almost all experiments involve UCD expert(s)


Statements to test

• S1: without usability expert, if the project team has

sensitivity and some knowledge in UCD, Agile-UX

works.

• S2: with usability expert involved in the project team,

usability of the produced product is better than in

S1.

• S3: the dynamic of the project team is better when a

usability expert is involved.


Evaluate the suitability of the statements

2 experiments : with & without UCD expert

Context

• Prototyping of mobile application support to construction site

visit done by architects



Use case 1: without

The team

• 1 full-time dev UCD skills

• 1 part-time SCRUM master

• 1 part-time Product owner

business expert

Organization of work

• 6 months

• 22 iterations of 1 week

• SCRUM

Methods used

• Brainstorming to build the

product backlog

Use case 2: with

The team

• 1 full-time usability expert

• 1 full-time dev no UCD skills

• 1 part-time SCRUM master

• 1 part-time Product owner

business expert

Organization of work

• 6 months / 2.5 months

• 5 Iterations of 2 weeks

• SCRUM + Sy’s parallel

tracks

Methods used

• Brainstorming to build the

product backlog

• Personas 10Agile-UX: with or without a usability expert? -- Lou Schwartz


Use case 1: without Use case 2: with

UCD methods used

Personas X

Wire framing Power point ® Paper & pen + Balsamiq®

Users’ tests

direct

observation

6 users, 6

scenarios

At every iteration end with 2

users who know the application

and 2 novices

Users’ tests

real situation

1 user during 1

week

-

Satisfaction

questionnaire

SUS SUS

Focus groups - To evaluate the

wireframes

Expert review - Bastien & Scapin ergonomics

criteria11Agile-UX: with or without a usability expert? -- Lou Schwartz


Use case 1: without

Feelings of the team

• Slow progression

Observed team dynamic

• No real dynamic

• Demotivation

Use case 2: with

Feelings of the team

• Quick progression

• Go deeper in the

functionalities proposed

• Improve quality of the

application

Observed team dynamic

• Pair-designing

• Developer increased his

UCD skills

• Good and constant

motivation

Qualitative results



Use case 1: without

Users’ satisfaction

Number of problems meet

Use case 2: with

Quantitative results

Average 75,42 % 81.25%

Min 62.5 % 75%

Max 90 % 92.5%

Imp

orta

nce

1 5 2

2 2 1

3 3 1

4 0 1

6 1 1

8 0 1

10 1 0

12 1 0

15 1 0

20 1 0

TOTAL 15 7

Importance =

number of

testers who

met the

problem *

seriousness of

the problem

13

Conclusion

Validate that the initial statements are justified

hypotheses for further studies

• S1: without usability expert, if the project team has sensitivity

and some knowledge in HCI, Agile-UX works.

• S2: with usability expert involved in the project team, usability

of the produced product is better than in S1.

• S3: the dynamic of the project team is better when a usability

expert is involved.


Thank you for your attention

[email protected]

Technology

Agile-User Experience Design: With or Without a Usability Expert in the Team?