User Experience Design Techniques for Agile Teams
When: February 25, 2009. Time: Noon – 5:00 PM
Where: Work Play Space, 941 Wealthy Street SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49506
Following the regular XP West Michigan meeting will be this special registration-only workshop. Reserve your seat now at http://xpwestmichigan.org/pages/UserExperienceDesignWorkshop
The objective of user experience design (UE) is to deliver a satisfying overall experience as a result of a person’s interactions with a particular product or service. User experience designers perform user
research and usability tests, develop models of users, their attitudes, needs and behaviors and translate this intelligence into useful stories, sketches and prototypes. UE activities can inform and support an Agile development process.
User experience designers share many values with Agile developers. By changing the language of product definition from “features” to “user stories” Agile helps product teams focus on the value the product delivers to real people, rather than the technology used to deliver that value. By bringing people together to play the planning game, Agile makes it possible for developers to ask product managers “what do you mean by that?” and for product managers to ask “this seems easy, why
will this take so long? Agile developers and UE designers both want to solve real-world problems and value solutions over theory.
Even if you don’t have a UE specialist on your team, you can benefit from knowing more about UE methods. Please join Lane Halley for a survey of UE techniques, adapted for Agile teams. Through a combination of lecture and hands-on exercises, you will increase your understanding of UE methods and gain useful techniques you can use immediately.
In this half-day workshop, you will learn how to:
- Choose appropriate UE techniques for your team and project
- Successfully collaborate with diverse teams
- Understand who your “user” is, and what he or she values
- Create compelling design concepts that are shared by the entire
team - Translate design concepts into smaller user stories that can be
implemented - Prioritize and sequence product construction, without losing sight
of the “big picture.”
This workshop is appropriate for people working on Agile teams, or anyone interested in a hands-on workshop in UE techniques.
About the presenter:
Lane Halley is a Principal Design Consultant with Cooper in San Francisco, CA. Her career spans the formative years of the interaction design profession. Prior to joining Cooper in 1997, Lane worked in
marketing, training development, technical account management and product management roles at SSC, Microsoft, Mindscape and SenSage. While at Cooper, she has helped companies ranging from start-ups to large corporations create compelling design solutions for enterprise and consumer applications, websites and devices and is a popular teacher of CooperU courses. Lane believes that interaction design is a bridge between product management and development, and that user experiencedesign informs and enhances Agile product development.