UX and visual design within a scrum environment can present some real challenges. In order to keep design from becoming the bottleneck it needs to be done a sprint or more ahead of the implementation sprint. This is especially true for the MashedIn team that I am currently a part of where sprints are just 1 week in length. Design also needs to be forward thinking and tightly coupled with business strategies to avoid throwaway work. How can this be accomplished while avoiding the well documented pitfalls of waterfall or scrummerfall and achieve the benefits agile offers? The developers on the MashedIn team are a pretty smart group and it would just be stupidity not to involve everyone in design even though implementation may be their primary focus. Introducing the team to designs during planning at the beginning of a sprint and then simply implementing these designs does not seem like a viable option. This approach yields lower quality due to rushed decisions based upon little or no user data, design by committee, and poor task estimation. It also drags out planning and actually reduces overall velocity. How can design for later sprints be performed within the team while maintaining velocity on implementation tasks? Team involvement in UX design clearly does remove some focus from the implementation tasks at hand but over several sprints it should actually increase efficiency. Part of the reason being it keeps everyone up to date and on the same page thus sprint planning requires far less communication and decision making. This approach provides the UX specialists and BA’s the time required to perform necessary research and analysis. It provides time within each sprint to communicate the findings of user research to the team. By keeping everyone in the loop, and involved, higher quality decisions can be reached at every level for every task and the duration of sprint planning is reduced significantly.
In this post I will outline some of our recent changes to the design process of MashedIn.
During the current sprint we start by brainstorming ideas for a feature that is 1 or more sprints in the future. In this example it is the introduction of recommendations to the MashedIn widget. After a short brainstorming session all the ideas are considered and wireframes or some testable artifact are produced for 1 or more approaches to the UX. This is about half a day of work for 1 person.
In the case of recommendations I produced wireframes then presented them to the team in order to ensure acceptance criteria was met.
Next the wireframes were converted into a working prototype that could be properly user tested. This was about half a day of effort.
This prototype was then tested on usertesting.com. User testing this feature presented a unique challenge because it is all about mutual connections and how these can provide value when making a purchasing decision. The user could not actually login to see themselves or their actual connections. We tried to remedy this by using sesame street characters that would represent the user and their connections.
The user test scenario was as follows:
“You are the Cookie Monster and today you want to break out of your comfort zone so you have decided to try cheese for the first time.
You have found a listing in the yellow pages for the bulk cheese warehouse. On this listing there is an area where you can see how you are connected to bulk cheese warehouse and recommendations.”
Findings from the user tests were then documented and “demo-ed” to the team. At this point some technical considerations were discussed allowing us to avoid complexity and 1 missing acceptance criteria was uncovered. Using the feedback the prototype was iterated over. This was about a half day of work.
The MashedIn team has made UX and visual design for mobile a priority. Mobile design is not an afterthought and there isn’t a separate version of presentation code for mobile. This has led to a more focussed overall design while allowing the team to concentrate efforts on our technological niche instead of writing and testing multiple versions of code. The other benefit is constant consideration given to how the MashedIn product can be extended within the mobile space.
Effective sales people start the sales process by getting to know their customers. They then use this knowledge to somehow draw connections to people the customer already knows. The reason is obvious. People prefer to do business with those they know and trust. If you don’t know someone directly you can build trust by showing them how they are connected to you through someone they do know. In many ways this is the equivalent of a warm introduction.
According to the idea of the six degrees of separation everyone is separated by only 5 acquaintances at most. This notion greatly influenced early thought on social networks. Current social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin allow users to network with various objectives in mind. Some networks are focussed on “friending” and others on building business connections. In the end all represent some sort of connection.
By building direct connections in social networks you gain many mutual connections. These mutual connections could be instrumental in building trust with your customers. The key is exposing them. MashedIn is a free product that provides a way for you to show people how they are connected to you.
FREE tools are always nice! Check out these 5 powerful social marketing tools for your business.
These tools will help you monitor what is being said about you online, build your reputation through word of mouth and connect with potential customers.
Reputation Monitor - Out of touch with your online presence? Find out what people are saying about your business. Promote the good things so customers find them first.
MashedIn - Show people how they’re connected to you through the social networks you use. You get your own URL or a widget for your website or blog.
Sound Advice Amplifier - Customers have questions and you have advice. Promote your sound advice to potential customers in places like Facebook and Twitter.
Business Listing - Can people find your business online? Make sure your business listing appears everywhere customers are looking.
Rewards and Special Offers - Tired of paying for ads that don’t work? Reward customers who promote your business while attracting new customers with special offers at the same time. Only pay when you make a sale.
I will never have to get up and look at the chalk board outside VendAsta’s doors again to find the answer to this all important lunch question. Sean Lynch has written a very cool Innovation Place iGoogle gadget that displays the daily menu. It can be found here. Excellent work Sean!
Recently I attended the Google I/O conference with Jason Collins, our CTO. Since this was a developer conference I was initially a little concerned that it would be too technical for me. None-the-less I decided to attend because so many sessions were focused on OpenSocial and social networking containers and this was the exact type of research we needed for our web 2.0 start-up MyFrontSteps. I was pleasantly surprised that most of the sessions I attended did not delve too deeply into code. Also as expected both of the keynotes were very impressive. Marissa Mayer reminded me once again how important it is to let user data drive the decisions and that the “simplest design is probably right”.
For me some of the most memorable information was contained in the session “Best Practices for Spreading Your App without Ruining the User Experience” put on by Vivian Li, Chris Schalk, and Kevin Marks. In it they described how to foster organic growth over brute force viral growth by focusing on a “usage group” instead of an “invite loop”. The latter can lead to what they termed “Application Fatigue” where users become tired of all the noise and lack of value then unistall their apps. The application that MyFrontSteps is creating will be a highly useful one that brings true value and therefore it only makes sense to focus on sustained organic growth through high adoption and retention. MyFrontSteps will allow users to share their home, inspirational ideas, and helpful recommendations in order to engage their friends across social networks. We will do this while respecting users privacy and giving them complete control over privacy settings.
More to come on the specifics of MyFrontSteps and how these best practices will be applied to its social applications…
While it is tough to know who should take credit for AJAX I do know who I attribute to using AJAX in ways that have now revolutionized the Art of the Start. Brendan King wrote a post describing how at VendAsta (a new saskatoon software company) we have used Google’s collaborative online tools to work more efficiently than ever before. Lately I find myself installing fewer and fewer applications on my bloated Vista OS and simply lighting up Firefox, then logging into online applications. VendAsta’s start-up costs have been greatly reduced through the use of these applications and I seem to find more and more brilliant ones each day to replace what I would have had to install on my computer. The advantages to having these applications, and their documents online, is obvious. With collaboration becoming less and less frustrating, team morale and efficiency have seemed to gone through the roof. Ryan, a software developer on the VendAsta team wrote a great post recently about automating work-flow, not just digitizing it. The web 2.0 applications I am seeing lately really seem to get this.
With lower costs for software, servers, storage, etc. we at VendAsta can focus on building a stronger team and attracting other smart people that share our love of the revolution that is happening today in the world of software. We can put that money that used to be spent on hard start-up costs towards salaries, benefits, and simply a really really cool environment. The world of Saskatoon software development is changing and it is very exciting to be apart of it as a start-up.
Having just returned home from a great trip to New York for the Inman conference I thought this would be the ideal time to start my new blog.
I and other former P2ers have started a new company called VendAsta. While VendAsta is our consulting company we will also be creating technologies in the real estate space. I can’t tell you how excited I am about the ideas we have and working with some of the most brilliant and fun people I know. On Thursday of last week VendAsta moved into our new office space located at Innovation Place. It is a great location with many great neighbours also in the technology industry. The vibe is incredible!
The name Pixel Imperfect Design comes from a recognition that initial design is never perfect. The end goal of the design is always in flux. Quality execution accounts for this and is best achieved by sprinting toward an end goal bit by bit, often, and as a team -- re-adjusting based upon user feedback and the new realities that unfold over time.
