Abstract
User Experience (UX) Professionals often face the problem that their role and their contribution to software development projects are misunderstood. They are confronted with new challenges when they join agile or lean project teams. Over the following pages I will explain how UX professionals can make design tangible. I will describe how they can guide software development projects, how they can create a common understanding of the targeted User Experience and how they can involve others in the shaping of the design. After outlining the current challenges, I will explain how activities such as Design Studios, Sketching and Prototyping can be used to foster an understanding of the design rationale, and how artifacts like Product Vision Statements, Design Tenets, Personas, User Scenarios, Wireframes and UI Flows help to frame the design problem and document the design solution. Using these activities and artifacts will lead to smoother project operations and better results.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
Different styles of wireframes can be viewed at http://wireframes.tumblr.com/
- 4.
An example of a user scenario combined with some persona information can be found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rosenfeldmedia/4459979060/
References
Anderson, S. (2011). Principles to build by. IA Summit 2010. Available online at http://www.slideshare.net/stephenpa/design-principles-to-build-by. Accessed 29 Jan 2012.
Apple Inc. (2011). iOS human interface guidelines. Available online at https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/MobileHIG/MobileHIG.pdf. Accessed 29 Jan 2012.
Boersma, P. (2010). Good design faster. Available online at http://www.slideshare.net/pboersma/good-design-faster-at-design-by-fire-2010. Accessed 29 Jan 2012.
Brooks, F. P. (2010). The design of design. Boston: Pearson Education.
Brown, D. M. (2011). Communicating design: Developing web site documentation for design and planning (2nd ed.). Berkeley: New Riders.
Buley, L. (2009). Design principles in a nutshell. Available online at http://www.adaptivepath.com/ideas/d120209. Accessed 29 Jan 2012.
Buxton, B. (2007). Sketching user experiences. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann.
Camillus, J. C. (2008). Strategy as a wicked problem. Harvard Business Review, May 2008.
Cerejo, L. (2010). Design better and faster with rapid prototyping. Available online at http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/06/16/design-better-faster-with-rapid-prototyping/. Accessed 29 Jan 2012.
Cockburn, A. (2000). Writing effective use cases. Boston: Addison-Wesley.
Constantine, L. L., Lockwood, L. (1999). Software for Use: A Practical Guide to the Models and Methods of Usage-Centered Design, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Cooper, A. (1999). The inmates are running the asylum. Indianapolis: Sams.
Dorst, K. (2003). The problem of design problems. In N. Cross & E. Edmonds (Eds.), Expertise in design (pp. 135–147). Sydney: Creativity and Cognition Studio Press.
Downes, J. (2010). Using sketchboards to design great user interfaces quickly. Available online at http://www.boxuk.com/blog/using-sketchboards-to-design-great-user-interfaces. Accessed 29 Jan 2012.
Evans, W. (2011). Introduction to design studio methodology. Available online at http://uxmag.com/articles/introduction-to-design-studio-methodology. Accessed 29 Jan 2011.
Garrett, J. J. (2002). A visual vocabulary for describing information architecture and interaction design. Available online at http://www.jjg.net/ia/visvocab/. Accessed 29 Jan 2012.
Harrelson, D., & Buley, L. (2008). Sketchboards and prototypes. Available online at http://www.slideshare.net/ugleah/sketchboards-prototypes-presentation. Accessed 29 Jan 2012.
Heath, C., & Heath, D. (2007). Made to stick: Why some ideas survive and others die. New York: Random House.
ISO (2010). ISO 9241–210:2010: Ergonomics of human-system interaction – Part 210: Human-centred design for interactive systems, Switzerland.
Johnson, J. (2011). Close photoshop and grab a pencil: The lost art of thumbnail sketches. Available online at http://designshack.net/articles/inspiration/close-photoshop-and-grab-a-pencil-the-lost-art-of-thumbnail-sketches/. Accessed 29 Jan 2011.
Lindstrom, J. (2011). Design studio: The good, the bad and the science. Available online at http://www.uxbooth.com/blog/design-studios-the-good-the-bad-and-the-science/. Accessed 29 Jan 2012.
Linowski, J. (2011). Interactive sketching notation. Available online at http://www.linowski.ca/sketching. Accessed 29 Jan 2012.
Mayhew, D. (1999). The usability engineering lifecycle. San Francisco, CA: Morgan Kaufmann.
Microsoft (2011). Windows user experience interaction guidelines. Available online at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa511258.aspx. Accessed 29 Jan 2011.
Moore, G. A. (2002). Crossing the chasm (Revised Edition). New York: Harper Business.
Mulder, S., & Yaar, Z. (2006). The user is always right: A practical guide to creating and using personas for the web. Berkeley: New Riders.
Norman, D. A. (1999). The invisible computer: Why good products can fail, the personal computer is so complex, and information appliances are the solution. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Norman, D. A. (2011). Act first, do the research later. Available online at http://www.core77.com/blog/columns/act_first_do_the_research_later_20051.asp. Accessed 29 Jan 2012.
Poppendieck, M. (2002). Wicked projects. In Software Development Magazine. Available online at http://drdobbs.com/184414851. Accessed 29 Jan 2012.
Poppendieck, M. (2004). An introduction to lean software development. Available online at http://www.leanessays.com/2004/06/introduction-to-lean-software.html. Accessed 29 Jan 2012.
Pruitt, J., & Adlin, T. (2010). The essential persona lifecycle: Your guide to building and using personas. San Francisco, CA: Morgan Kaufmann.
Quesenbery, W., & Brooks, K. (2010). Storytelling for user experience. Brooklyn: Rosenfeld Media.
Rams, D. (1993). Ten principles for good design. Available online at http://www.vitsoe.com/en/gb/about/dieterrams/gooddesign. Accessed 29 Jan 2012.
Rosson, J. M. & Carroll J. M. (2002). Usability Engineering: Scenario-Based Development of Human-Computer Interaction, San Francisco , CA: Morgan Kaufmann.
Saffer, D. (2009). Design for interaction (2nd ed.). Berkeley: New Riders.
Schauer, B. (2007). Sketchboards: discover better + faster UX solutions. Available online at http://www.adaptivepath.com/ideas/sketchboards-discover-better-faster-ux-solutions. Accessed 29 Jan 2012.
Schwaber, K., & Sutherland, J. (2011). The scrum guide. Available online at http://www.scrum.org/scrumguides/. Accessed 29 Jan 2012.
Sellen, A. J., & Harper, R. (2003). The myth of the paperless office. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Shum, A. (2010). Designing windows phone 7 series. MIX 10, Las Vegas. Available online at http://channel9.msdn.com/events/MIX/MIX10/CL14. Accessed 29 Jan 2012.
Soegard. (2008). Affordances. Available online at http://www.interaction-design.org/encyclopedia/affordances.html. Accessed 29 Jan 2012.
Spool, J. (2001). Creating great design principles: 6 counter-intuitive tests. Available online at http://www.uie.com/articles/creating-design-principles. Accessed 29 Jan 2012.
Star, S. L., & Griesemer, J. R. (1989). Institutional ecology, ‘translations’ and boundary objects. Social Studies of Sciences, 19(3), 387–420.
Synder, C. (2003). Paper prototyping: The fast and easy way to define and refine user interfaces. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann.
Ungar, J. (2008). The design studio: Interface design for agile teams. Agile 2008 conference, IEEE Computer Society, Washington.
Ward, J. (2008). Sketches, wireframes and CSS. Available online at http://jeff.io/posts/user-interface-wireframes. Accessed 29 Jan 2012.
Warfel, T. Z. (2009). Prototyping: A practitioner’s guide. Brooklyn: Rosenfeld Media.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hennigs, L. (2012). Making Design Tangible in Software Development Projects. In: Maedche, A., Botzenhardt, A., Neer, L. (eds) Software for People. Management for Professionals. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31371-4_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31371-4_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-31370-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-31371-4
eBook Packages: Business and EconomicsBusiness and Management (R0)