The presentation discusses the importance of integrating UX design into agile development processes to enhance project outcomes and speed up time to market. It outlines the roles of stakeholders, the need for consistent UX across development sprints, and the benefits of a UX pipeline that synchronizes design efforts with development schedules. Key methodologies like agile and lean UX are compared, emphasizing the necessity for UX to have a front-loaded approach within the development cycle.

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Accelerating Time to
Market by Pipelining
UX and Development
Presented by
Jeff LeBlanc
Director of UX, ICS

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About the Presenter
Jeff LeBlanc
Director of User Experience
• Software developer for 20+
years
• Certified Qt trainer since 2003
• Human Factors team at HP
Medical
• Adjunct faculty at WPI
teaching HCI
jeffl@ics.com

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About ICS
Delivering Smart Devices for a Connected World
• Founded in 1987
• Largest source of independent Qt
expertise in North America
• Trusted Qt Service Partner since 2002
• Exclusive Open Enrollment Training Partner in North
America
• Provides integrated custom software development
and user experience (UX) design
• Embedded, touchscreen, mobile and desktop
applications
• HQ in Waltham, MA with offices in California,
Canada, Europe

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Agenda
• Who, What and Why UX Design
• When to bring UX Design thinking to a project
• UX, Agile and the software lifecycle
• The Pipeline Approach

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Integrating UX into Your Process
• UX Design should not happen in a vacuum
• Designers need to recognize implementation concerns
and toolkit capabilities
• Huge design specs may not be the way to go
• Requirements can change over a long project

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UX, Requirements Gathering and the
Customer
• Project requirements come from all
stakeholders
• Sales
• Marketing
• Engineering
• The UX person can play the Champion of the
User
• Look at features through the eyes of the user
• The person using may be different than the person
buying (sales and marketing)

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The Big Picture
• Development sprints focus on deliverable features with
a timebox
• Different developers may work on different features
over course of the project
• The focus on only what is in the sprint may lead to
inconsistencies in the product
• UX maintains that big picture consistency

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UX and Software Development
Cycle
• Waterfall
• Requirements, specs, code, test, release
• UX done up front, large specs given to developers
• Agile
• Light specs, features coded in short sprints
• Very common practice today
• UX done just ahead of implementation

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Agile Development
• A development methodology that allows software to
be delivered at a modern pace
• From the “Manifesto for Agile Development”
– Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
– Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Used successfully at many companies
• Agnostic to UX
http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2012/07/is-ux-strategy-
fundamentally-incompatible-with-agile-or-lean-ux.php

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Lean vs Agile
• Lean UX is not the same as Agile UX
• Intended to be used in lean start ups
• Highly strategic in nature, get the most value
• Agile UX is a set of practices to integrate UX into Agile
development

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Treading Lightly
• Agile has always been by developers, for developers
– The UX is often a side effect
• Danger of small working pieces at the expense of
cohesive UX
– The Big Picture
• Agile must be approached broadly, not just as a
programmer thing
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/agile-development-and-usability/

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Agile UX
• An Agile UX process to match development
• Lightweight docs, user stories, sketches, prototypes
• UX needs a head start
• at least one sprint, preferably more
• Never design and develop a feature in the same sprint!
• Participate in grooming the backlog and sprint
planning
• UX and development can then proceed in parallel

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The Big Picture
• Development sprints focus on deliverable features with
a timebox
• Different developers may work on different features
over course of the project
• The focus on only what is in the sprint may lead to
inconsistencies in the product
• UX maintains that big picture consistency

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Making Agile UX Work
• Executive buy in
• Your Agile process has to be agile (flexible)
• Communication effectively and often
• UX people need to be part of the product team

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Sprinting Ahead
• Development can be done on screens the next sprint
after design is finished with them
• Lets design and development proceed in parallel

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UX Pipelining
• Process for syncing UX deliverables with development
schedules
• Lets the development backlog be filled as the UX team
completes pieces of the overall design
• Leverages industry standard best practices

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Design Patterns
• Design Patterns have become a popular method of
applying best practices and shared experiences since
the GoF book
• A simple definition of ‘design patterns’ is elusive
• “The abstraction from a concrete form which keeps recurring
in specific non-arbitrary contexts” (Riehle and Zullighoven)
• A literary form of software engineering problem-solving, with
roots in architecture
• Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language (1979)
• Documentation of best practices
• A common vocabulary and shared language

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Design Patterns
• “Design Patterns: Elements of
Reusable Object-Oriented
Software”, 1994

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Model View Controller Pattern
• MVC separates a UI-based
application into three parts
• Display of information to the
user
• Interaction with the user
• The data itself

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Driven by the IA
• The Information Architecture contains many of the
elements needed for an MVC application
• Information to display to a user: Model
• Map and Flow tells us screens: early View
• Types of UI components: Controller
• Drop downs, selectable lists and radio buttons
are all types of One of Many Selectors

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The Controller and Qt
• Knowing types of components lets us make certain
API assumptions and start to put appropriate Signals
and Slots together
• Example: QSpinBox and QSlider both have
setValue(int) and valueChanged(int)

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The Controller and Qt
• We don’t care about the final View yet

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UX Pipeline
• First part of the pipeline
• Model, early View, parts of the Controller

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Wireframes
• UX process proceeds to detailed wireframes
• Chose specific controls
• Why wireframes?
• Can be validated with users
• Still easy to update

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Adding Visual Design
• Apply visuals to validated wireframes
• Create visual specs and pattern library
• Export assets for development

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Agile Delivery
• Finished screens can be delivered per sprint to
match user stories
• Screens need to be fully designed in the sprint
prior to implementation
• Development being involved during design
validation helps ensure screens are implementable

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Completed View

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UX Pipeline
• Second part of the pipeline
• Final complete View, rest of the Controller (specific
components)

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Advantages to the Pipeline
• Brings UX into the Agile process in a very meaningful
way
• Optimizes the interaction between design and
development
• Breaks down the silos
• Much faster time to market compared to traditional
waterfall development

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In Closing
• Agile UX is becoming an effective methodology in
development organizations
• UX needs a head start over development to be
effective
• Pipelining UX activities with development can greatly
accelerate project completion

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Thanks for Attending