Ixd and agile development

Interaction Design - How it works (approx 30 minutes)

To begin have you a clear understanding of the Interaction Design process yet and where it fits in a software development cycle?

• 
  Interaction design process: Your text outlines four activities for Interaction Design
  • identifying needs and establishing requirements for the user experience
  • developing alternative designs that meet those requirements
  • building interactive versions of the designs
  • evaluating interactive versions of the design
• Cooper has developed these activities into a process with a number of discrete phases. 
  • 
    Compare the two processes.
  • How are they similar or different
  • Note particularly the activities that are involved in each phases of Cooper's process, and the detail Preece, Rogers and Sharp comment on in their discussion of practical issues
• Lifecycle models:  In both software development and human computer interaction, a range of holistic models of the development process have been developed. 
  • 
    View the Lifecycle Models PowerPoint for a summary of models presented in the text.
  • Refer to the text if necessary
  • On each slide – note where interaction design as a sub process would exist

Agile programming - what is it? (approx 30 minutes)

Agile programming (Extreme Programming [XP], Lean Software Development, Pragmatic Programming) views software development more like new product development than the manufacturing-like processes that the software industry has used for the last 20 years. (Beedle, 2001).

• 
  Develop your own insights on the Agile approach:
  • 
    View the links and text information about Agile programming
• What’s your response to this?
  • As a group, share your opinions of this process
  • Include a diagram of this process on the Lifecycle Models PowerPoint
  • If you support the ideas, develop a very short statement (one paragraph) about this approach which you should include on your company website.

Agile programming and Interaction Design (approx 30 minutes)

Interaction Design is about designing the behaviour of an interactive product (not the interface- buttons, widgets etc). So how do these design activities work in a lean, mean, rapid development process?

Agile processes focus on customers needs. Someone in the development team needs to take on the communication process with the client and also with the development team.  If you have ever worked with a client in the software development process, you will have found that the customer rarely knows what they really want.  Often their ideas will be vague or generic. eg we need a database!

So how do you achieve a usable useful product using this development approach?

• IXD and Agile: explore how these two processes have been combined in these two recent resources:
  • 
    Clash of the Titans: Agile and UCD
  • User Centred Design and Agile Development
• 
  Case Studies:  For a more insightful view of the how the process can work for interaction designers, read the case studies from designers who are working in agile environments
• Your process:  
  • Now develop a process that you think will work for your small startup company.
  • 
    Check out one approach developed by Kelly Goto
  • Record this first in the Lifecycle Models powerpoint
  • When the group is happy with it outline your process on your website.