J. Ambrose Little wrote:
> What I see here in terms of what is disliked about agile is this
> perceived concept that agile means lack of coherent design. I
> shudder to
> think of anyone ("engineer" or "designer") jumping headfirst into a
> project
> without any sort of coherent vision that has at least been fleshed
> out at a
> high level. I hope we can all agree that this is bad.
> I suggest you take a look at Scott Ambler's Agile Modeling site;
> this is a
> good intro <http://www.agilemodeling.com/essays/
> initialArchitectureModeling.htm>
> to how initial modeling fits in. (Ambler is about the most
> authoritative you
> can get with agile, so if you want to gain an understanding of what
> agile
> "should" be, he's a good source.) You'll note that he includes UI
> design in
> this up front modeling (calls it UI flow models). That's where it
> seems interaction designers would do well to plug in to do their up
> front
> modeling. Then as you go through the iterations, you flesh out and
> refactor
> your designs along with the engineers.
Applying the "design-it-first" philosophy to Agile seems to be a
recent, and happy, development, but it is not part of Agile's core DNA.
Much of the canonical Agile literature, unfortunately, still
recommends this process:
1) Gather requirements while coding the product.
2) Slap on a UI
Even the "initial modeling" article you link to seems to be written
for an audience for whom a "plan it first" process is abnormal. Most
of the planning it recommends is technical, not UX focused. With one
excellent exception: The following paragraph is one of the funniest
development understatements I've read in a while, and while it is
written for an audience who apparently doesn't already understand the
importance of UX, it does make a strong and simple case:
> "...you will architect the UI of your system by exploring the flow
> between major UI elements, including both screens/pages and
> reports. This is critical to your system's success because the
> user interface is the system to your stakeholders. Not the
> technology. Not the data. Not really cool frameworks that you're
> working with. If you do not architect the user interface
> effectively you run the risk that you will build a system that your
> stakeholders aren't interested in working with. "
When working with an Agile team, or reading Agile literature, it's
important to determine if when they say "design" they mean UX design
or tech design, because usually they will mean the latter.
-Cf
Christopher Fahey
____________________________
Behavior
biz: http://www.behaviordesign.com
me: http://www.graphpaper.com
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