Last weekend I attended an interesting “retreat”, really a mini conference run in the unconference style. The topic of the retreat was “Agile/UX”, where UX = User Experience design. The motivating idea was that while the agile and UX movements have made important discoveries in their respective fields (software development and design, respectively) and really changed how people work for the better, both would be better together.
No agile methodology I know explicitly discusses how user experience design activities fit into the workflow. In the agile context, design usually means the design of code, not the design of the user experience. The standard response of agile to this accusation is “of course each project involves other roles, and they will just fit in wherever makes sense that fits with the principles and practices of the team”. While this may be true, by leaving design out of the explicit picture, many agile software development teams who are doing lots of other things right continue to ignore the importance of incorporating iterative UX design into their process, and therefore are delivering software efficiently that is not as effective as it could be.
I assume something similar is wrong with standard UX practice. For one, it seems that perhaps the design community still tends to think of design as something only done Big and Upfront at the beginning of a project, missing an opportunity to learn from their mistakes and iteratively improve their design as implemented in the hands of real users.
Based on my personal experience, this seemed like a great idea, so I was really looking forward to attending the retreat. At CDD we do work with designers, and although (if I may be so bold) we’re doing better than most informatics companies in this regard, it’s still clear to me that we could do even better. Thus far we’ve have a hard time testing/validating and iterating on user designs and working these activities into our software development workflow.
The retreat was inspiring and motivation building, having so many people in one room who care passionately about making great software from both design and development. One enduring theme was the abolition of “Us and Them” thinking. Two points are important here. One, we should think of designers and developers primarily as people, rather than as roles, people who work together and bring their competencies to bear on a common goal. Two, a given set of competencies that normally would be thought of as belonging to two separate roles can be found in the same person, so we should never be limited by thinking that a given person is either a designer or a developer, isolating them accordingly from activities that involve the other discipline. Design and development must work together, even within the same brain.
I would have liked more detailed discussion at the retreat, however this was difficult to accomplish in two short days. I also would have liked more representatives of the “business” or “money” role, because I think the same principle applies: abolish us vs. them thinking, and find ways for enlightened practitioners from a mix of all of these roles to combine their expertise effectively.
Further activity is planned, targeting something concrete to be presented at the Agile 2010 conference. Stay tuned.