UX Research within an Agile Design and Development Sprint Cycle

UX RESEARCH WITHIN AN AGILE DESIGN & DEVELOPMENT SPRINT CYCLE

1 JUN 2016

Session Survey: http://www.uxpa2016.org/sessionsurvey/279 #UXPA2016 #OOUX

WHAT WE’LL COVER

5 artifacts that we use

TOPICS

Lessons learned

What’s nextA case studyResearch during design & dev sprints


IN CONTEXT

PAST PRESENT FUTURE


THE PAST


LINEAR AND ATOMIZEDTRADITIONAL PROCESS

01 02 03RESEARCH DESIGN DEVELOPMENT


RESEARCH DEFICITSTRADITIONAL PROCESS

Puts focus on user in up-front research phase: lack of user focus in later phases

Conceptual and discovery research too early, during abstract phase

Developer validation too late, during concrete phase of implementation


DESIGN DEFICITSTRADITIONAL PROCESS

Interactive focus - lacks opportunities for abstraction

Atomized focus on aesthetics

Voice of user can be lost


IMPLEMENTATION DEFICITSTRADITIONAL PROCESS

Developers see little interest in research phase (not relevant to their needs yet)

“Whisper down the lane”


TRADITIONAL PROCESS

Assumes and relies upon close physical proximity of teams

Assumes and relies upon hyper-communicative team members

Not necessarily scalable when utilizing geographically


WHAT IS THE PROCESS REALLY LIKE?PROCEDURAL DESIGN & PROGRAMMING


How can we change it?


THE PRESENT


A shift in mindset.


A SHIFT IN MINDSET

Research engaged throughout the project; all disciplines use sprints to deliver value.

Research is a design and development tool for creating a “user-center designed” product.

Abandon the assembly line process.


THE GOAL

As a researcher,

I want to get to findings & insights (quickly),

so that we can get to a good design (quickly).

USER-CENTERED DESIGN


RESEARCH & SPRINTS

Who?Research, Design, Dev, Clients

What? Informing or Evaluating

When?As often as needed throughout sprints

USER-CENTERED DESIGN


What’s it look like?


THE AGILE TRINITY

EVALUATE EVALUATE EVALUATE

RESEARCH DESIGN BUILD


SPRINT 0 SPRINT 1 SPRINT 2 SPRINT 3 SPRINT 4 SPRINT 5 SPRINT 6 SPRINT 7


GENERATIVE OR DESCRIPTIVERESEARCH TO INFORM


EVALUATIVERESEARCH TO VALIDATE


A CASE STUDYPROJECT BACKGROUND

Challenge Website redesign to create a dedicated experience for advisors Establish a new look and feel to communicate launch of new brand Leverage and re-architect existing content Timeline 6 month timeline / 8 Sprints (3 wks each) Deliverable Working prototype that demonstrates new user experience and key workflows with usable code


THE SPRINT PLAN

Purpose Design the vision.

Concept Design the framework.

Feature sets Design the workflows.


SPRINT 0 SPRINT 1 SPRINT 2 SPRINT 3 SPRINT 4 SPRINT 5 SPRINT 6 SPRINT 7


SPRINT 0 SPRINT 1 SPRINT 2 SPRINT 3 SPRINT 4 SPRINT 5

kickoff

Session Survey: http://www.uxpa2016.org/sessionsurvey/279 #UXPA2016 #OOUXSession Survey: http://www.uxpa2016.org/sessionsurvey Conference Survey: http://www.uxpa2016.org/survey www.uxpa2016.org #UXPA2016

STAKEHOLDER INTERVIEWS IN-DEPTH USER INTERVIEWS

FRAMEWORK DESIGN

TECH ASSESSMENT

COMPETITIVE ASSESSMENT

SPRINT 0Week 3 Week 4Week 1 Week 2

SPRINT 1

Session Survey: http://www.uxpa2016.org/sessionsurvey/279 #UXPA2016 #OOUXSession Survey: http://www.uxpa2016.org/sessionsurvey Conference Survey: http://www.uxpa2016.org/survey www.uxpa2016.org #UXPA2016

FRAMEWORK DESIGN

TECH ASSESSMENT

COMPETITIVE ASSESSMENT

Week 3 Week 4 Week 6Week 5 Week 7

RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

SPRINT 0

IN-DEPTH USER INTERVIEWS

USABILITY TESTING

SPRINT 1 SPRINT 2

PROTOTYPE DEVELOPMENT


5 RESEARCH ARTIFACTS

The Research Protocol The Observation Guide The Post-Testing Debrief The “Report” The Refactoring Sprint


THE RESEARCH PROTOCOL

Study Goals Document the objectives for the study.

Key Tasks Document what’s being tested


THE OBSERVATION GUIDE

Observation guide to keep observers on task What are we testing? What did you observe?


THE POST-TESTING DEBRIEF

Protocol Outline Handout Study Goals Key Tasks

Organized Discussion What worked What worked but needs tweaks What didn’t work Requires data analysis


THE “REPORT”

Study Goals What worked What worked but needs tweaks What didn’t work Other important findings


THE REFACTORING SPRINT

Research Detailed analysis, looping in design, dev, and clients if anything changed since the debrief. Start planning the next set of research.

Design & Development Iterate based on research findings, begin next feature set.


LEARNED IN THIS PROCESS

What are we researching? Lead the process.

What are we changing? Own the discussion.

What does it mean to be agile? Be ready for change.

THE ROLE OF THE RESEARCHER


How can we iterate on this process?


THE FUTURE


A change in mindset.


Object-Oriented UX #OOUX

A change in mindset.


OOUX ORIGINS

Dave Collins (1994) Designing Object-Oriented User Interfaces

Sophia Voychehoyski (2015) http://alistapart.com/article/object-oriented-ux

http://alistapart.com/article/object-oriented-ux


OOUX

Place object design before interaction design.

Place data before logic.

Abandon the assembly line micro-process.


PROCEDURAL


PROCEDURAL vs.


PROCEDURAL vs. OBJECT ORIENTED


WHY DO WE WANT TO DO THIS?

So we can think about the entire system in line with real-world objects in users’ mental model, not digital-world actions.

We don’t go to a web site because we want to search, filter, or check-out. We go to a web site because we want a plane ticket. We want relationships. We want food. We want a book.

We want things.


You might be thinking, this all sounds great, but we have a lot of invested in Agile. We have user stories, we have workflows, we have a minimal viable product we need to produce in a few weeks.

What does that all mean?

BUT WE’RE SO INVESTED IN AGILE!


Start with a discrete “object”, which can have associated “actions” and “adjectives” associated with it.

OOUX & “THINGS”

Example: Object: Coin Verb: Rate Adjective: Year


As a user I can view numerous coins so that I can rate each coin.

As a user I can add/edit/delete comments for each coin and sort by date posted.

As a user I can view the properties of each coin, so that I can see what the current average rating is, as well as view the year, mint, type, obverse and reverse image and see who the user is who originally uploaded the coin.

THE USER STORYNoun, Verb, Adjective, Metadata


1. Nouns are objects

2. Verbs are methods of objects (CTAs)

3. Adjectives are properties of objects

4. Collection of adjectives are metadata

5. Find relationships between objects

6. Find dependencies between objects

7. Code before wireframes (!)


THE EFFECT OF OOUX ON PROCESS?

Research, then design, then development vs.

Research and design and development


SPEAK THE SAME LANGUAGE


THANK YOUEd [email protected]@phillywebguy

Georgia [email protected]@247ux

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UX Research within an Agile Design and Development Sprint Cycle

Technology

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