CHI 2008 Workshop: Optimizing Agile UCD

Workshop date and location: Sat 5-April-2008 -- Florence, Italy
Submissions deadline: 9-Nov-07
Notification date: 28-Nov-07

Organizers: Desirée Sy, Lynn Miller

The goal of this CHI 2008 workshop is to improve future Agile user‑centered design (UCD) experiences for User Experience (UX) practitioners (such as interaction designers, usability professionals, UI designers, etc.) by investigating best practices for Agile UCD.

To achieve this, senior UX practitioners with prior experience on an Agile project will share their knowledge, collaborating in order to:

·        Identify success factors for Agile UCD

·        Find and remove obstacles that block Agile UCD

·        Find opportunities that Agile projects give us

·        Identify best UX practices for Agile UCD

·        Identify UX skills that Agile projects need.

The results of this investigation will be shared with the wider UX community (including those new to Agile development practices), but the participants should have experience in both UCD practices and Agile development.

See Call for Proposals: CHI 2008 for participant proposal guidelines.

Background and prior work

User experience practitioners are still adapting in order to create user-centred designs within Agile development environments.

This session builds upon prior discussions at an Informal SIG with the same title at CHI 2007 (with 22 participants), and at a SIG held at UPA 2007 (with about 45 participants). 

There were two main components of the CHI 2007 informal SIG. In the first part, the organizer compiled a list of potential success factors for Agile UCD. These factors examined areas such as the maturity of the Agile process at each organization, changes to the UCD process and changes to the development role of UX professionals that occurred as a result of switching to Agile processes. The organizer derived these factors by interviewing five participants before the conference about their experiences practicing user-centred design on Agile projects.

In the second part of the informal SIG, the group discussed current issues or problems with Agile UCD, and shared some solutions. The preliminary list of problems was gathered by the facilitator through the interviews, and this list was expanded during the SIG. A summary of the concerns (and some of their symptoms) is listed in CHI 2007 summary.

We had hoped that we might find correlations between some of the potential success factors and the satisfaction levels of UX professionals with the Agile UCD process. However, since the overall satisfaction level of a majority of participants was low, and people came from a variety of backgrounds, this area of investigation was dropped in the interests of time for the SIG held at UPA 2007.

Instead, the discussion at the UPA SIG focused on the key problem areas or issues identified by CHI participants, and some proposed solutions. These are summarized here: CHI/UPA 2007 summary

Preparation for this workshop

This Wiki page serves as the communication forum for participants whose position papers are accepted before the workshop. The agenda for the workshop will be set by these early participants.

The organizers may contact participants before the workshop to get more detailed information, and may ask some participants to prepare some materials to bring to the session. We will also leave time during the workshop day to discuss any new items of general interest to the group.

Opportunities for discussion

The general areas of discussion that we choose to address include the following:

·        What skills do interaction designers have that Agile projects need most?

·        What opportunities do Agile projects give interaction designers that non-Agile projects do not?

·        What are some ways to capitalize on the opportunities, and bring our skills to projects?

·        What obstacles stand in the way of these opportunities? Can we address them?

·        Are there methods or practices that can optimize Agile user-centered design?

We would like practical and proven examples of past work to form the basis of the shared demonstrations.

Proposed workshop agenda

Introduction and context

9:00-9:15 a.m.

·        The agenda and the goals for the session.

·        Brief introductions of the participants (probably handled as a summary of the CFPs).

NOTE: All presentations will be focused on topics chosen by participants prior to the workshop.

Best practices

9:15-10:30am

·        2 to 3 presentations by participants of successful Agile UCD practices or skills.

Break

10:30-11:00am

Best practices (continued)

·        2 to 3 presentations by participants of successful Agile UCD practices or skills.

LUNCH

12:30-1:30pm

Remaining challenges

1:30-2:00pm

·        Discussion and list of challenges. Focus on top 2 or 3 items.

Workgroups

2:00-3:00pm

·        Break into workgroups for different challenges to discuss and brainstorm.

Break

3:00-3:30pm

Workgroup presentations

3:30-4:45pm

·        2 to 3 presentations by workgroups

Session conclusion

4:45-5:00pm

·        What are the next steps?

·        Follow up