Abstract
This paper investigates how the integration of agile methods and User-Centered Design (UCD) is carried out in practice. For this study, we have applied grounded theory as a suitable qualitative approach to determine what is happening in actual practice. The data was collected by semi-structured interviews with professionals who have already worked with an integrated agile UCD methodology. Further data was collected by observing these professionals in their working context, and by studying their documents, where possible. The emerging themes that the study found show that there is an increasing realization of the importance of usability in software development among agile team members. The requirements are emerging; and both low and high fidelity prototypes based usability tests are highly used in agile teams. There is an appreciation of each other’s work from both UCD professionals and developers and both sides can learn from each other.
The research herein is partially conducted within the competence network Softnet Austria (www.soft-net.at) and funded by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Economics (bm:wa), the province of Styria, the Steirische Wirtschaftsförderungsgesellschaft mbH. (SFG), and the city of Vienna in terms of the center for innovation and technology (ZIT).
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Holzinger, A.: Usability Engineering for Software Developers. Communications of the ACM 48(1), 71–74 (2005)
Hussain, Z., Lechner, M., Milchrahm, H., Shahzad, S., Slany, W., Umgeher, M., Wolkerstorfer, P.: Agile User-Centered Design Applied to a Mobile Multimedia Streaming Application. In: Holzinger, A. (ed.) USAB 2008. LNCS, vol. 5298, pp. 313–330. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)
Glaser, B.G., Strauss, A.L.: The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research. Aldine (1967)
Ferreira, J., Noble, J., Biddle, R.: Agile development iterations and UI design. In: Agile 2007, pp. 50–58. IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos (2007)
Ferreira, J., Noble, J., Biddle, R.: Up-front interaction design in agile development. In: Concas, G., Damiani, E., Scotto, M., Succi, G. (eds.) XP 2007. LNCS, vol. 4536, pp. 9–16. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)
Fox, D., Sillito, J., Maurer, F.: Agile methods and User-Centered design: How these two methodologies are being successfully integrated in industry. In: AGILE 2008, pp. 63–72 (2008)
Patton, J.: Hitting the target: adding interaction design to agile software development. In: OOPSLA 2002 Practitioners Reports, Seattle, Washington. ACM, New York (2002)
Patton, J.: Twelve emerging best practices for adding UX work to agile development (June 2008), http://www.agileproductdesign.com/blog/emerging_best_agile_ux_practice.html
Chamberlain, S., Sharp, H., Maiden, N.: Towards a framework for integrating agile development and user-centred design. In: Abrahamsson, P., Marchesi, M., Succi, G. (eds.) XP 2006. LNCS, vol. 4044, pp. 143–153. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)
McInerney, P., Maurer, F.: UCD in agile projects: dream team or odd couple? Interactions 12(6), 19–23 (2005)
Holzinger, A., Errath, M., Searle, G., Thurnher, B., Slany, W.: From extreme programming and usability engineering to extreme usability in software engineering education (XP+UE→XU). In: COMPSAC 2005: Proceedings of the 29th Annual International Computer Software and Applications Conference (COMPSAC 2005), Washington, DC, USA, vol. 2, pp. 169–172. IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos (2005)
Miller, L.: Case study of customer input for a successful product. In: Agile Conference, pp. 225–234 (2005)
Meszaros, G., Aston, J.: Adding usability testing to an agile project. In: Agile Conference 2006 (2006)
Memmel, T., Reiterer, H., Holzinger, A.: Agile methods and visual specification in software development: A chance to ensure universal access. In: Stephanidis, C. (ed.) HCI 2007. LNCS, vol. 4554, pp. 453–462. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)
Sy, D.: Adapting usability investigations for agile user-centered design. Journal of Usability Studies 2(3), 112–132 (2007)
Brown, J., Lindgaard, G., Biddle, R.: Stories, sketches, and lists: Developers and interaction designers interacting through artefacts. In: AGILE 2008. Conference, pp. 39–50 (2008)
Ungar, J.: The design studio: Interface design for agile teams. In: AGILE 2008. Conference, pp. 519–524 (2008)
Wolkerstorfer, P., Tscheligi, M., Sefelin, R., Milchrahm, H., Hussain, Z., Lechner, M., Shahzad, S.: Probing an agile usability process. In: CHI 2008: human factors in computing systems, pp. 2151–2158. ACM, New York (2008)
Hussain, Z., Milchrahm, H., Shahzad, S., Slany, W., Tscheligi, M., Wolkerstorfer, P.: Integration of extreme programming and user-centered design: Lessons learned. In: Abrahamsson, P., Marchesi, M., Maurer, F. (eds.) XP 2009. LNBIP, vol. 31, pp. 174–179. Springer, Heidelberg (1975)
Federoff, M., Courage, C., Villamor, C.: Agile success: A user experience case study. In: UPA 2009 International Conference, Usability Professional’s Association (2009)
Miller, L., Sy, D.: Agile user experience SIG. In: Proceedings of the 27th international conference extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems CHI, Boston, MA, USA, pp. 2751–2754. ACM, New York (2009)
Seaman, C.B.: Qualitative methods in empirical studies of software engineering. IEEE Trans. Softw. Eng. 25(4), 557–572 (1999)
Adolph, S., Hall, W., Kruchten, P.: A methodological leg to stand on: lessons learned using grounded theory to study software development. In: CASCON 2008: Proceedings of the 2008 conference of the center for advanced studies on collaborative research, pp. 166–178 (2008)
Coleman, G., O’Connor, R.: Using grounded theory to understand software process improvement: A study of irish software product companies. Information and Software Technology 49(6), 654–667 (2007)
Hansen, B.H., Kautz, K.: Grounded theory applied - studying information systems development methodologies in practice. In: HICSS 2005: Proceedings of the Proceedings of the 38th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos (2005)
Whitworth, E., Biddle, R.: The social nature of agile teams. In: Proceedings of the AGILE 2007, pp. 26–36. IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos (2007)
Cao, L., Ramesh, B.: Agile requirements engineering practices: An empirical study. IEEE Software 25(1), 60–67 (2008)
Hoda, R., Noble, J., Marshall, S.: Negotiating contracts for agile projects: A practical perspective. In: Abrahamsson, P., Marchesi, M., Maurer, F. (eds.) XP 2009. LNBIP, vol. 31, pp. 186–191. Springer, Heidelberg (2009)
Strauss, A., Corbin, J.M.: Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory, 1st edn. Springer, Heidelberg (1990)
Strauss, A., Corbin, J.M.: Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory, 2nd edn. Springer, Heidelberg (1998)
Schreiber, R.S.: The ’how to’ of grounded theory: avoiding the pitfalls. In: Schreiber, R.S., Stern, P.N. (eds.) Using Grounded Theory in Nursing. Springer, Berlin (2001)
Holzinger, A.: Rapid prototyping for a virtual medical campus interface. IEEE Software 21(1), 92–99 (2004)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Hussain, Z., Slany, W., Holzinger, A. (2009). Investigating Agile User-Centered Design in Practice: A Grounded Theory Perspective . In: Holzinger, A., Miesenberger, K. (eds) HCI and Usability for e-Inclusion. USAB 2009. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5889. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-10308-7_19
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-10308-7_19
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-10307-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-10308-7
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)