Comments on: Justifying usability research

By: Giles Colborne

Giles Colborne — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 09:35:29 +0000

I like Agile – it’s focussed on communication, rather than documentation, on iteration rather than dictation and on outcomes rather than specifications. In my experience those things make for better projects.

You still need to involve the users up front, though. You shouldn’t start building something unless you know it’s the right thing for the users.

If you’re running an agile project where the work is done in short iterative chunks of a couple of weeks then, yes, you can get user feedback throughout the iterative build process.

One common way of doing this is to have the user centred design people working one iteration ahead of the developers. So when the developers come to their iteration, the knowledge about what will work is ready for them – just in time.

But the topic of how best to integrate user centred design into Agile is far from closed. There’s loads of interest in it at the moment and user experience conferences are full of success stories and cautionary tales.

By: Neil Crookes

Neil Crookes — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 13:19:58 +0000

Using the Agile development methodology, where features are developed in iterations users can test a feature after every stage of development, using the real software in it’s environment rather than a mockup.

Enhancements to the usability of a feature can then be identified and fed back into the list of tasks or stories, prioritised and actioned should the return on investment be sufficient to warrant the additional cost.

This process negates the need for an extensive and expensive up-font specification and mockup generation phase, which identifies all the features and scopes them to optimum usability, and may then turn out to be outside of budget, no longer required further down the line or lack the return on the investment required to achieve them.

Don’t get me wrong, I think user centred design is of massive importance, you just do not need to do it upfront. The Agile development process welcomes and actively encourages change during the development life cycle.

The Standish Group has researched 40,000 IT projects in the United States over 10 years between 1994 and 2004 and compiled the findings in the “CHAOS Chronicles” report. It found that still, two thirds of all projects either fail totally, or are over time, over budget and/or lacking critical features and requirements.

However, success rates have improved more than 100% over the period, the primary reason for which, according to the Group Chairman, Jim Johnson, is “Doing projects with iterative processing as opposed to the waterfall method, which called for all project requirements to be defined up front, is a major step forward.”

What are your thoughts on this?

By: Daniel Szuc

Daniel Szuc — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 00:06:17 +0000

This is a great quick reference summary of why its useful to speak to users and value of upfront research – thanks G!

By: Laurei

Laurei — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 14:37:53 +0000

Another really nice argument well packaged for easy client digestion, when it comes to defending the right to create high quality work!

By: Pete Fairhurst

Pete Fairhurst — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 14:30:25 +0000

Having observed several user tests first-hand in recent months, the sort of insight these lead to can completely change the way you think about what you’re trying to achieve. And the end products were tangibly better for it – both from a specification and development point of view, as well as the end user experience.

Great overview, Giles.