Fitting UX into an Agile
Development Environment
Keita Del Valle
Esri International User Conference
July 23–27 | San Diego Convention Center

Based on knowledge learned in the “Agile UX Toolkit” tutorial taught
by John Schrag & Desiree Sy at the 2012 UPA conference. The slides
from that tutorial can be found here.

AGILE CHALLENGE:
Unclear priorities
SOLUTION:
Implement Iteration 0 for planning & strategy

Standard
AgileUser
Centered
Agile
Elements of User Experience*
*Tier diagram taken from “The Elements of User Experience” by Jesse James Garrett

AGILE CHALLENGE:
“Done” is ambiguous.
SOLUTION:
Redefine “done” for the team.

AGILE CHALLENGE:
Research can’t inform development in time
SOLUTION:
Parallel & skew design & development

Design & UX
Development
I0 I1 I2
Research
Designs for I2
Research for I3
Structure
Minimum UI work
Designs from I1
User test I1 Code
Designs for I3
Research for I4
Who’s Doing What When?

AGILE CHALLENGE:
Lack of documentation
SOLUTION:
Invest in rich communication

AGILE CHALLENGE:
Build order loses user’s story
SOLUTION:
Use context to cluster & order backlog

AGILE CHALLENGE:
Frequent change wastes design work
SOLUTION:
Increment design process

AGILE CHALLENGE:
Usability testing takes too long
SOLUTION:
Use formative usability testing &
continuously recruit testers

Train Everyone on Agile
Design
Marketing
UX
Documentation
Development
Product Mgmt Project Mgmt
Business Analyst