Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

Integrating User-Centred Design in Agile Development pp 249–276Cite as

Integrating Both User-Centered Design and Creative Practices into Agile Development

  • Chapter
  • First Online:

Part of the book series: Human–Computer Interaction Series ((HCIS))

Abstract

Tensions between software development methodologies and user-centered design (UCD) have always existed, but waterfall methodologies do provide a process context within which UCD methods can be clearly integrated whenever this is required. Popular agile methodologies such as Scrum create different challenges to integrating UCD. However, fitting UCD into agile methodologies will not necessarily result in high software quality. The combined approaches can still have significant design gaps that must be addressed by additional creative design practices. This chapter relates selected historical methodological trends to tensions between software and creative design. To resolve these tensions, innovative software development needs to draw on creative design practices in addition to UCD and agile methods. Specifically, innovative software development needs to draw on three key insights from design research: creative design work co-evolves problem and solution spaces; design materials talk back; and, the best design work is generous in scope and intent. These three insights are used firstly to structure a critique of the Agile Manifesto and secondly to provide the basis for proposing a balanced approach to software development that can appropriately integrate engineering, user-centered and creative design practices.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   99.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   129.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD   129.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already.”

  2. 2.

    The Chicken and the Pig business tale is about commitment to a project. To make ham and eggs, a pig is sacrificed to provide ham and a chicken provides eggs, but survives: the pig is fully committed, while the chicken is only partially involved, yet both are needed.

References

  1. Gram C, Cockton G (1996) Design principles for interactive software. Chapman and Hall, London

    Book  MATH  Google Scholar 

  2. Rittel HWJ, Webber MM (1973) Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sci 4:155–169

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Takeuchi H, Nonaka I (1986) The new new product development game. Harv Bus Rev 64(1):137–146

    Google Scholar 

  4. University of Cincinnati (2016) Science and engineering expo, https://www.research.uc.edu/sciencefair/participants/student-grades-6-12.aspx

  5. Dym CL (1994) Engineering design: a synthesis of views. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, MA

    Google Scholar 

  6. Dym CL, Little P (2009) Engineering design: a project based introduction, 3rd edn. Wiley, New York

    Google Scholar 

  7. Meyer B (2014) Agile! the good, the hype and the ugly. Springer, Switzerland

    Google Scholar 

  8. Boehm B, Turner R (2003) Balancing agility and discipline: a guide for the perplexed. Addison-Wesley, Boston

    Google Scholar 

  9. VersionOne (2015) State of Agile™ Survey. www.versionone.com/pdf/state-of-agile-development-survey-ninth.pdf

    Google Scholar 

  10. Gould J, Lewis C (1985) Designing for usability: key principles and what designers think. CACM 28(3):300–311

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. ISO (2010) ISO 9241-210:2010. Ergonomics of human-system interaction – part 210: human-centred design process for interactive systems. International Organisation for Standardization

    Google Scholar 

  12. McNeill T, Gero JS, Warren J (1998) Understanding conceptual electronic design using protocol analysis. Res Eng Des 10(3):129–140

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Guindon R (1990) Designing the design process: exploiting opportunistic thoughts. Hum Comput Interact 5(2):305–344

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Beck K, Beedle M, Van Bennekum A, Cockburn A, Cunningham W and 12 other authors (2001) Manifesto for Agile Software Development. http://www.agilemanifesto.org/

  15. Cockton G (2007) Make evaluation poverty history. alt.chi paper, CHI 2007. Available from https://www.academia.edu/1906725/Make_Evaluation_Poverty_History

  16. Cockton G (2008) Revisiting usability’s three key principles. In: Czerwinski M, Lund AM, Tan DS (eds) CHI 2008 extended abstracts, pp 2473–2484

  17. Cockton G (2013) A critical, creative UX community: CLUF. J Usability Stud 10(1):1–16. Invited Editorial, uxpajournal https://www.org/a-critical-creative-ux-community-cluf/

    Google Scholar 

  18. Cockton G (2013) Design isn’t a shape and it hasn’t got a centre: thinking BIG about post-centric interaction design. In: Proceedings of MIDI’13. ACM, Article 2, 16 pages. doi:10.1145/2500342.2500344

  19. Brennecke A, Keil-Slawik R (eds) (1996) Position papers for Dagstuhl seminar 9635 on history of software engineering. http://www.dagstuhl.de/Reports/96/9635.pdf

  20. Jones JC, Thornley DG (eds) (1963) Conference on design methods. Pergamon Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  21. Frayling C (1993) Research in art and design. R C Art Res Pap 1(1):1–5

    Google Scholar 

  22. Cross N (2007) Designerly ways of knowing. Birkhauser, Basel

    Google Scholar 

  23. Cross N (1982) Designerly ways of knowing. Des Stud 3(4):221–227

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Brown T (2005) Strategy by design, fast company. June 2005. http://www.fastcompany.com/52795/strategy-design

  25. Cross N (2011) Design thinking: understanding how designers think and work. Berg, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  26. Dorst K, Cross N (2001) Creativity in the design process: co-evolution of problem–solution. Des Stud 22(5):425–437

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Sutherland J (2003) SCRUM: get your requirements straight before Coding. https://www.scruminc.com/scrum-get-your-requirements-straight/

  28. Cohn M (2004) User stories applied. Addison-Wesley Professional, Boston

    Google Scholar 

  29. Kaczor K (2011) 5 common mistakes we make writing user stories. Scrum Alliance Member Article. https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2011/august/5-common-mistakes-we-make-writing-user-stories

  30. Department for Culture, Media and Sport (2016) Creative industries economic estimates. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/494927/Creative_Industries_Economic_Estimates_-_January_2016.pdf

  31. Buxton B (2010) Sketching user experiences. Getting the design right and the right design. Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco

    Google Scholar 

  32. Schön DA (1992) Designing as reflective conversation with the materials of a design situation. Res Eng Des 3(1):131–147

    Article  Google Scholar 

  33. Simon HA (1969) The sciences of the artificial, 1st edn. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA (2nd edn 1981, 3rd edn 1997)

    Google Scholar 

  34. Darke J (1979) The primary generator and the design process. Des Stud 1(1):36–44

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. Schön DA (1983) The reflective practitioner: how professionals think in action. Basic Books, New York

    Google Scholar 

  36. Killion JP, Todnem GR (1991) A process of personal theory building. Educ Leadersh 48(6):14–17

    Google Scholar 

  37. Go JC (2012) Teaching as goal-less and reflective design: a conversation with Herbert A. Simon and Donald Schön. Teach Teach 18(5):513–515

    Article  Google Scholar 

  38. Heskett J (2005) Design: a very short introduction. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Book  Google Scholar 

  39. Telier A (Thomas Binder, Giorgio De Michelis, Pelle Ehn, Giulio Jacucci, Per Linde and Ina Wagner) (2011) Design things. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA

  40. Hollis B, Maiden N (2013) Extending agile processes with creativity techniques. IEEE Softw 30(5):78–84

    Article  Google Scholar 

  41. Dorst K (2015) Frame innovation: create new thinking by design. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. ISBN 978-0-262-32431-1

    Google Scholar 

  42. DSDM Consortium with Jennifer Stapleton (2002) Business focused development. Addison Wesley, London

    Google Scholar 

  43. Porter S (2011) Chickens and pigs, Scrum.org Community Publications, Article 90, https://www.scrum.org/About/All-Articles/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/90/Chickens-and-Pigs

  44. Dennis AR, Fuller R, Valacich JS (2008) Media, tasks, and communication processes: a theory of media synchronicity. MIS Q 32(3):575–600

    Google Scholar 

  45. Brown T (2009) Change by design: how design thinking transforms organizations and inspires innovation. Harper Business, New York

    Google Scholar 

  46. Biffl S, Aurum A, Boehm B, Erdogmus H, Grünbacher P (eds) (2005) Value-based software engineering. Springer, Berlin

    Google Scholar 

  47. Friedman B (1996) Value-sensitive design. Interactions 3(6):16–23, ACM

    Article  Google Scholar 

  48. Cockton G (2008) Designing worth: connecting preferred means with probable ends. Interactions 15(4):54–55, ACM

    Article  Google Scholar 

  49. de Saint Exupéry A (1972) Terre des Hommes. Gallimard (reprint of original 1939 book)

    Google Scholar 

  50. Banks B (2008) A sort of philosophy. rb.log, www.richardbanks.com/?p=1497

  51. Gothelf J with Seiden J (2013) Lean UX: applying lean principles to improve user experience. O’Reilly Media

    Google Scholar 

  52. Law EL-C, Lárusdóttir MK (2015) Whose experience do we care about? analysis of the fitness of Scrum and Kanban to user experience. Int J Hum Comput Interact 31(9):584–602

    Article  Google Scholar 

  53. Garnik I, Sikorski M, Cockton G (2014) Creative sprints: an unplanned broad agile evaluation and redesign process. In: Proceedings of NordiCHI’14. ACM, pp 1125–1130

    Google Scholar 

  54. Lárusdóttir M, Cajander Å, Gulliksen J, Cockton G, Gregory P, Salah D (2014) On the integration of user centred design in agile development. In: Proceedings of NordiCHI’14. ACM, pp 817–820

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

My understanding of design arenas has its roots in a UK NESTA Fellowship on Value-Centered Design (2005–2008), and was further developed during the TwinTide COST Action (2008–2013). My understanding of agile practices developed during TwinTide through collaborations with Igor Garnik and Marcin Sikorski [53] and with Marta Lárusdóttir and Åsa Cajander [54]. Joe Dumas’ invitation to write an editorial [17] for the Journal of Usability Studies gave me a valuable opportunity to apply the results of creative design research to rethinking UCD practice.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Design, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 8ST, UK

    Gilbert Cockton

Authors
  1. Gilbert Cockton
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gilbert Cockton .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Design, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom

    Gilbert Cockton

  2. School of Computer Science, Reykjavik University, Reykjavik, Iceland

    Marta Lárusdóttir

  3. School of Physical Sciences and Computing, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, United Kingdom

    Peggy Gregory

  4. Department of Information Technolog, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    Åsa Cajander

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Cockton, G. (2016). Integrating Both User-Centered Design and Creative Practices into Agile Development. In: Cockton, G., Lárusdóttir, M., Gregory, P., Cajander, Å. (eds) Integrating User-Centred Design in Agile Development. Human–Computer Interaction Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32165-3_11

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32165-3_11

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-32163-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-32165-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation