28 October 2011

97: Informal UX feedback for Agile Development

Narrowing the gap between gathering usability data and acting on it.

From the software developers’ viewpoint, they can no longer manage the slow pace of formal usability testing. Instead the require faster and more iterative informal testing, by asking for customer feedback on features and also having IT developers in other parts of the company test the product to see if they could break it. It's a more agile testing approach.

The toolkit has changed to include faster methods. It now takes a shorter time to get a study going, finished, and analyzed.

All this research, modeling, and high level design often occurs in weeks, not months.

Organizations need a continuous flow of users scheduled to validate design work. Schedule users for remote usability testing or site visits well in advance. The one thing you can depend on in an Agile context is that there will always be something.

UX work is mostly about discovery, agile work mostly about delivery. Two worlds - both concerns are necessary. Discovery never stops. And, discovery without delivery isn't very valuable.

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