Experience Design and Software Engineering meet in a bar.
What happens next?
Without much prompting and taking a sip of her beer, Experience Design tells Software Engineering all about her ideas on their modern day relationship.
Software Engineering says, “Experience Design, these days I’m pretty agile, do you think we can get along?”. Experience Design replies, “I’m sure we can. After all, Jeff Paton got it, why shouldn’t we?”
A tale of strategy meeting execution
Experience Design goes on to explain that there are models to integrate with Agile and Lean UX methodologies. Often businesses or stakeholder groups don’t understand the overlaps or differences, so she explains this further to Software Engineering, who is close to another good friend of hers, Continuous Delivery.
Considering their respective lineage, they both realise that they have much in common. This is because user centered design and agile are human centered disciplines, inheriting their DNA from Human Factors Psychology.
As Don Norman commented,
“Human-centered design is a philosophy, not a precise set of methods, but one that assumes that innovation should start by getting close to users and observing their activities”
Similarly, the Agile Manifesto states,
“Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software”
Experience Design (XD) goes on to explain that she is the child of:
- Human Centered Design
- Human Factors Psychology
And closely related to:
- Universal / Inclusive Design
- Design and Generative Thinking
- Human Computer Interaction / Human Factors (UX)
Her non-identical quadruplet children include:
- User Experience Design (UX)
- Customer Experience Design (CX)
- Service Design (SD)
- Learning Experience Design (LX) — a new field
It turns out Experience Design is a young grandmother. Her grandchildren, parented by User Experience Design (UX), include:
- Research & Innovation
- User Centered Design
- Usability Testing & Evaluation
- Interaction Design
- Visual Design
- Information Architecture
- Content Strategy; and
- Product Strategy
What a big family!
A tale of innovation, where science meets creativity
Software Design goes on to comment that Experience Design’s child, User Experience, has an impressive toolkit to validate or disprove hypotheses. When partnered with technology contexts, this is a powerful combination.
Experience Design agrees and encourages Software Engineering to observe some user testing. As Jesse James Garrett once observed,
“User-centered design means understanding what your users need, how they think, and how they behave — and incorporating that understanding into every aspect of your process”
Experience Design excitedly explains there is even a way to measure the success of a feature or software improvement.
Susan Weinschenk PhD, in Usability: A Business Case, created a ROI (Return On Investment) model.
To define and measure success, Weinschenk suggests that the following goals should be prioritised, inorder to calculate the ROI of UX (in the case of a commercial product):
- Improved performance
- Increased exposure
- Improved credibility
- Reduced resource burden
- Increased sales
“So, how do we know what to build?”, asks Software Engineering.
Experience Design answers that are are a number of methodologies that can be utilised to analyse a hypothesis, generate a problem statement, then test and validate execution, including:
- Human Centered Design (HCD), incorporating User Centered Design (UCD)
- Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (but adapted for UX)
- The Kano Model
- Design Thinking (UK Design Council, IDEO)
- Jobs to be Done (JTBD) framework
- Lean Startup Model (Build, Measure, Learn)
- Lean UX
“Once we know what our problem statement is and understand our users, we can prioritise and write user stories, based on user goals and needed features”, adds Experience Design. “This is where the Lean aspects kick in, after we’ve done all our divergent thinking, user research and stakeholder engagement first.”
“When we do our prioritisation and pre-iteration planning, with everyone in the group, we can work out our MVP, deliver continuously, measure, learn and pivot if needed”.
“Finally, remember, the goal is to learn and fail fast. And in Continuous Delivery there are fewer wrong turns if Experience Design can work both in and a sprint ahead of iteration, however there are opinions on that model too”.
Software Delivery’s ears prick up, “Tell me more?”.
Experience Design replies, “I will once I speak with our users, but that is another story”.
They both giggle at the intended pun and agree they are hungry. Experience Design orders a steak and says to the bartender taking orders for the kitchen, “make it lean and well done”.
