Pipelining is a rapid design and development process for creating high-quality software. Taking a pipelining approach ensures a commitment to the user experience (UX), which speeds development. According to Strategic Data Consulting, UX investments made early on decrease time to market by as much as 30%. In this two-part webinar series we’ll share real-world success stories highlighting projects we’ve designed and built using a pipelining approach, as well as show you what it means to integrate pipelining into your own product development process. You’ll learn: The Why, What and Who of User Experience Design What it means to ‘pipeline’ development with UX design How a pipelining approach gets to you market faster Evolution of the pipelining approach Best practices for making this approach work in an Agile environment How to champion UX design within your organization What is Pipelining? The term “pipelining” comes from computer architecture, where it describes a method for executing multiple instruction sequences synchronously to maximize throughput. Similarly, pipelining software projects allows User Experience (UX) design and software development activities to overlap, thus shortening project timelines. As the fields of design and development have matured, each has refined powerful, efficient processes. The pipelining approach leverages these processes and coordinates best practices from both fields to accelerate time to market — all without compromising quality.

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Accelerating Time to
Market by Pipelining
UX and Development
Presented by
Jeff LeBlanc
Director of UX, ICS

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About the Presenter
Jeff LeBlanc
Director of User Experience
• Software developer for 20+
years
• Certified Qt trainer since 2003
• Human Factors team at HP
Medical
• Adjunct faculty at WPI
teaching HCI
jeffl@ics.com

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About ICS
Delivering Smart Devices for a Connected World
• Founded in 1987
• Largest source of independent Qt
expertise in North America
• Trusted Qt Service Partner since 2002
• Exclusive Open Enrollment Training Partner in North
America
• Provides integrated custom software development
and user experience (UX) design
• Embedded, touchscreen, mobile and desktop
applications
• HQ in Waltham, MA with offices in California,
Canada, Europe

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Agenda
• Who, What and Why UX Design
• When to bring UX Design thinking to a project
• UX, Agile and the software lifecycle
• The Pipeline Approach

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What is User Experience?
User Experience (UX)
involves creating solutions
to problems that are both
functional and engaging

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User Experience vs User
Interface
•All software has a User Interface (UI)
of some type, but how do you feel
after using it?
•A positive User Experience (UX)
means
• You enjoyed using the system, or at least did not
dislike it
• You would use it again and recommend it to others

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What is Good Design?
• “I’ll know it when I see it”
• The First Impression
• Good design sets your product apart and makes it
memorable (in a good way)
• The iPhone changed the world
• Customers expect it
• They care about what something does for them, not
how it does it

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The Importance of Design
• Design isn’t just a good idea, its good business
• Creative processes are often hard to put a price tag on
• Sometimes required
• ISO 9241-210 : Ergonomics of human-system
interaction
• FDA 2016: Applying Human Factors and Usability
Engineering to Medical Devices

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Pragmatic Solutions
• According to a 2015 Pragmatic Marketing
survey, PMs are looking for solutions to
common problems
• Better working relationship and process between
product management and
development/engineering
• Spend more time on the front end ensuring that
development understands the context of the
requirements, the market problems and end user
use cases
2015 State of Product Management & Marketing, from Pragmatic Marketing
Total of 1800 individuals surveyed

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Project by the Numbers
• IEEE study (2005) found $1 trillion on IT/software
projects worldwide
• $50 Billion by US government alone
• HFI (2011) notes
• 15% of projects get abandoned
• 50% of a programmer's time during a project doing
avoidable rework
IEEE Spectrum, Sept 2005

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When to Apply UX Design
• Ideally, early on or at project start
• UX is also valuable at later project stages and in future
releases

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Why to Apply UX Design?
• Every dollar in UX saves between $2 and $100
• PointClear: ROI UX Best Practices in Tech Projects
(whitepaper), 2011
• User-centric design practices drive your brand
and build equity
• Look at companies known to practice UX
• Amazon: $1587
• Apple: $188
• Google: $1084

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The Market Maturity Curve

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Who does the UX Design?
• Software engineers think like engineers, not like end
users (customers)
– Different mental models
– Different skill sets
• Often get an interface that only makes sense to other
technical people
– Techies like to figure things out, but not everyone
else does

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Myth: Designers Slow Me Down!
• Can slow down development at the start of a project,
but not the final delivery
• Research shows UX design speeds up projects 30% -
50% in total time
http://www.usabilityprofessionals.org/usability_resources/usability_in_the_
real_world/roi_of_usability.html

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How Long to Write Code for This?

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Timelines
Project development without UX
Add UX??
Savings comes from preventing rework
Project finished ahead of schedule

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Looking Ahead
• Agile processes, including Agile UX, and gaining
popularity in the industry
• ICS practices a particular from of Agile UX we call
“pipelining” to greater synchronize UX and
development activities
• More on that next session!

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What is a UX Team?
• Not an engineering team
• Not a marketing team
• Not a sales team

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What is a UX Team?
• Diverse backgrounds, education and training,
including:
• Software engineering
• Human Factors engineering
• User Experience design
• Human computer interaction
• Visual design
• Industrial design
• Marketing and the customer perspective

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What Does UX Bring?
• A good UX person or team can
• Be the Champion of the User
• Help bridge development concerns with business
requirements
• Focus the development effort on the right issues

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UX Team Roles
• Different titles, different roles
• User Researcher
• UX Designer
• Interaction Designer
• Visual Designer

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UX Team Roles
• User Experience Designer
• Requirements analysis
• Information architecture
• Heuristic analysis
• Workflow and task analysis
• Wireframes
• Usability testing

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UX Team Roles
• Visual / Graphics Designer
• Branding
• Icon design
• Logo design
• Visual assets for development
• Design specs for development

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Demystifying UX Jargon
• Information architecture
• What: Outline of what information is presented
where in an application
• Why: Ensures that designers put the right
information on the right screens, and that there are
appropriate links between screens

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Demystifying UX Jargon
Sample Information Architecture (partial)
• Status Bar
• Time
• GPS
• WiFi
• Map View
• Map
• Vehicle
• Isometric
• Camera

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Demystifying UX Jargon
• Map and Flow Diagram
• What: Visual companion to Information
Architecture, shows the screens and navigation
network
• Why: Show high level navigation of full system

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Demystifying UX Jargon
Example Map and Flow

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Demystifying UX Jargon
• Wireframe
• What: Skeletal outline for an interface
• Why: Focus is on the information displayed on the
screen to ensure the proposed design has the right
information, on the right screens, at the right time
(right workflow)

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Demystifying UX Jargon
Example Wireframe

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Demystifying UX Jargon
• Heuristic analysis
• What: Identify and prioritize usability challenges in
an interface and recommend improvements
• Why: Gain an in-depth understanding of how an
application functions while identifying ways to
make it better; often provide quick usability
upgrades by identifying the “low hanging fruit”.

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Demystifying UX Jargon
• Task analysis
• What: Through conversations with and
observations of users, identify the mental and
physical activities that take place to accomplish a
given task; combine tasks to create a workflow
• Why: Understand the way people currently do
things, make any tweaks necessary, then design
(helps make sure the design is as close to right the
first time, rather than spending endless time on
iterations and rework)

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Demystifying UX Jargon
• Visual design
• What: All the elements that go into taking a
wireframe design to a finished version (overall
branding, color, icons, font, logo design)
• Why: Final / real-life application design, assets for
developers to use when they program, brand
identity and coherence

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Demystifying UX Jargon
Wireframes to final visual design

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The Bottom Line
• Product managers report that applying UX best
practices can solve several issues
• Applying UX techniques can accelerate a
project schedule
• More on pipelining next time
• A UX Team is different from other teams
(marketing, sales, development) you might
already be familiar with

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For Next Time
• UX, Agile and the software lifecycle
• The Pipeline Approach

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Questions?
Thanks for attending
See you next time!