The Challenge of Agile Development: Avoiding Half-Baked Design

30Apr07

My Takeaways
————————————————————————-

This was a jam-packed session. Leslie Chicoine works for former Adaptive Path founder Lane Becker and her thinking reflected a mix of theoretical jargon with some real-world practice insights.

• Being Open means Designers don’t own the design anymore
• PLAY FASTER; Test with users as you build it; release it; update it
• In the Web 2.0 world, you need to PLAY faster and playing faster means direct collaboration between design and development
• Designers need to get comfortable with not having the design finished; in fact, the design will be in a perpetual beta state
• A story is a bookmark for a conversation; whiteboard your stories; make them portable. This helps with understand the reason for a decision.
• There is a huge tension when it comes to Agile Design as it puts iterative design into practice and not just in a phase

My Notes
————————————————————————-

What is design ?
What is coding ?

xp and agile programming
Agile design: how to merge agile processes and design principles

======================================

web 2.0 =?…. PLAY FASTER

PLAY – very collaborative; rules make em up as u go; rapid iteration and collaboration

Output is not design
End result – not the end result design as a verb – something u do

======================================

Extreme Programming is an AGILE process
Motto: Embrace Change

3 things any team can do:
- weekly demos – all hands ; increases communication
- daily standups
- pairing (designer/coder)

======================================

Agile Design
Design is not about handing down a blueprint; its a process

Be willing to:
• embrace constant change
• embrace communal design ownership
• embrace evolving solutions

Some examples:
1. PIXAR’s “The Incredibles”
Share your opinion; challenging your ideas; good ideas can handle it bad ones fall by wayside

2. Scales of design (see slide 32)
Moving down large to small to test concept
Start playing as fast as possible
Note: This is just iterative design!! not a new concept

3. Documentation space as communication space; not as blueprints
A story is a bookmark for a conversation ; we aren’t having a conversation; we are being told what to do
whiteboard for stories; helps with understand the reason for a decision; portable white boards. All this is about exposing problems while managing constraints.

Thoughts:
• How can u really let go of the ego? We are taught to provide solutions
• She wants “open design” design for all by all

======================================
Design as an Open System

• Agile is open; its got to be flexible and extensible.
• Expose to create depth slide with functions not the graphics
• Design emerges from simple rules (moo.com example ; site reflects who they are – all about sharing )

======================================
How do you user test?

• Testing with users as you build it

Download the Presentation here:
The Challenge of Agile Development: Avoiding Half-Baked Design