Agile UX - Still some challenges, but I love it

Wintery Sprint Burndown :-)

I'm working in a company where agile was implemented several years ago - for me personally I work in agile projects since 2007. I'm a big fan of agile methodologies and I think it is the best process for the kind of software we are working on. I like the close collaboration between the various roles in one team and the early feedback from the customer.

Still I think there is a challenge for implementing UX in an agile process. For me personally the biggest challenge is the continues change of the UI and the interactions. Because additional functionalities are developed over a long period of time it's sometimes hard to integrate new functionalities in an optimal way. Often a UI "refactoring" would be necessary but the costs are at the moment very high and it's hard to convince oneself and the team that THIS bigger change is neccessary NOW.

In the last weeks and months I found the following interesting sources for Agile & UX:

• UserZoom published a free e-book "The Essential Guide to Integrating User Experience and Usability Testing in Agile" (registration neccessary): Nice overview of agile methods and some concrete suggestions like "A good rule of thumb is a 1:4 ratio of designers to developers. Also be sure to allocate project budget to user research and usability evaluation, ideally 10% of budget is a good target if possible."
• Lean UX - a great book by Jeff Gothelf
• One year ago Hoa Loranger of the Nielsen Norman Group published an article about "Doing UX in an agile world" with some interesting findings of case studies and a nice summary of the topic and the main challenges.

Upcoming conferences: UXCamp Vienna & SNEK

Hi,
I want to share some interesting conferences coming up in April 2015.

UXCamp Vienna 2015

On the 17th of April 2015 the UXCamp Vienna is again taking place at the FH Technikum Wien. The UXCamp Vienna is organized as a Barcamp - so this means everybody that participates should actively help to make a successful conference by giving a talk, communicating about the barcamp and share know-how during discussion.
The registration is already open - the early bird lasts until the 15th of March (30€). Other than usual barcamps the registration is not free - but the organization team invites a Key-Note Speaker and last year this was very cool.
The conference is mainly in german - but several talks are also in english.

SNEK 4

The SNEK conference is mainly focusing on .NET developers (and it is in german). The SNEK conference is taking place in Nürnberg (Germany) on 25th and 26th of April 2015. I will do there an introduction talk about UX review methods to find usability problems. Probably I will see you there :-).

Br, Claudia

UX-Findings: Develop UX Skills, Mobile UX & #littlebigdetails

Hi,

today I want to share some interesting articles & videos that inspired me in the last months.

Develop UX Skills

In my opinion one important goal of an UX expert should be to further develop know how about users and UX patterns over the time. As a team lead it is important to me to communicate this also to Junior UX Designers.
The article "Time with Users: Set Personal and Company Goals" by Jakob Nielsen was very inspiring for me to directly connect the time spent observing people with the personal goals.

Mobile UX: Luke W-How-To-Videos

The well-known UX expert Luke Wrobleski shared some interesting How-To-Videos on YouTube. He focuses on concrete UX problems in mobile development and explains solutions in detail.

LittleBigDetails - readme.io

There are several websites that collect littlebigsdetails - e.g. littlebigdetails.com. One nice example is the Password-Field of ReadMe.io.Check it out!

Login-Screen of readme.io

Regards, Claudia

Talk: Developing windows store apps - our experiences and learnings (german)

Hi,

together with 2 colleagues (Andreas Willich, TechTalk & Christoph Bach, CPB) I will do a talk next Thursday (June 6th) about our experiences and learnings developing two windows store apps (Windows 8).

We will present these two apps (PROFOS and Kilocoach) and we will talk about the challenges we faced while creating and developing these apps.

Profos - Kundeninformationen

Kilocoach - Startseite

Some facts:

• Free entry
• Please register
• a breakfast
• and 2 cool apps... so join us: http://bit.ly/11f5e8j

Thx.
BR, Claudia

User Experience Conference in Vienna @ linuxwochen

Hi,

I want to announce a great UX track at the linux weeks in Vienna next Saturday - May 4th, 2013.

In the morning I will do a workshop session with paper prototyping and usability testing. If you have an app idea or want to try out these techniques, you are very welcome.


More information regarding the UX sessions can be found on the User Experience Konferenz-Website (german).

Hope to see you there,
Claudia

PS: Of course free entry at all workshops and sessions.

4 weeks to go: UXcamp Vienna & Frustikus

Hi,

only 4 weeks to go and the great UXcamp in Vienna and the Frustikus award ceremony will take place. Because I'm involved in organizing both events I'm already very exited.

UxCamp Vienna November 9th and 10th, 2012

This year the first time we will have a two-day barcamp, starting on friday afternoon. We are looking forward to some great presentations and discussions regarding topics like user experience, Webdesign, Interface design, User-centered design and accessibility.

Please register (google docs) if you want to participate. We also prepared some information for visitors from other countries.

You can also follow us on:

• UxCamp Vienna Website
• @uxcvie (Twitter)
• Facebook

Frustikus November 9th, 2012

On Friday evening we will continue the UxCamp with the Get-together and "Frustikus" award ceremony for products with bad usability. This will take place at Ragnarhof (Grundsteingasse 12, 1160 Wien) at 8pm - free entry, no registration required!!.

NOMINATE! - We are sill looking forward for some nominations for Frustikus - add your entry @ www.frustikus.at

You can follow Frustikus on:

• Facebook
• @frustikus (Twitter)

Please register if you can join - but I also would appreciate if you can forward this to people that may be interested.

Regards, Claudia

Windows 8 App-a-thon in Vienna

Hi,

next weekend - August 25th and 26th - already the 2nd Windows 8 App-a-thon in Vienna will take place.

In the morning I will present 6 easy-to-use UX tools in 60 minutes, covering Interview Techniques, Personas, Wireframing, Paper Prototyping, Think aloud testing and heuristic evaluation.

Looking forward to see you there - free admission, but registration is necessary.
More information and registration you can find on the Microsoft website.

Br, Claudia