Brian Friesen — Fri, 30 May 2008 00:17:48 GMT

There are always ways to fit user experience design into any process. Will it be “good” design is another matter.

Several statements in this article trouble me and almost take a very “casual” attitude toward the resulting quality of the user experience. Agile was developed as a method of cranking out software quickly for the sake of monetary gain, NOT for the benefit of those who would ultimately have to use it.

Can “good” user experience design reside in an Agile process? Yes and no. It’s all about the end goal of developing the software in the first place. Is the world a perfect place in which products are developed for purely altruistic purposes? No. But user experience design and user centered design techniques were created to make software easier to use, NOT faster to develop.

“Fast” is not necessarily “good” when it comes to the end user experience. The user does not know or care if software dev takes 15 days or 15 months however, they DO care if the software sucks.

Statements like “bumping lower-priority items off the sprint” sound good but what usually happens is that what gets”bumped” ends up being careful research and design thought and application of that thought.

As the Agile process continues to grow in popularity we, as user experience designers will need to find ways to incorporate best practices into that process. Austin Govella has done a great job of doing so in this article, however, we must not lose sight of the basic goals of why there are user experience designers and the most important element of creating software in the first place….the end user.

Thinking and Making: Comments by Brian Friesen