Designing by Doing: Bringing Agile Thinking to UX Practice

In this workshop, we'll focus on the period in the project lifecycle from project kick-off to when we begin delivering working software. While classic Agile methods focus on early and frequent delivery of a quality software product, we'll here apply Agile thinking to the work that serves as its basis. This is both a critically important phase from the vantage point of User Experience Design and one in which Agile thinking can fundamentally transform a traditional approach into one that is far more condensed and intensive.

Using a fictional project as our narrative, workshop participants will journey through a series of activities that exemplify Agile thinking applied to UX practice. These will include Futurespectives, Cardstorming, Agile Personas, and iterating between Story Mapping and Design Studio. Questions we'll explore include: Where do User Stories come from? How do User Stories and User Experience Design inter-relate? How do we go from story maps to detailed design? And how is the UX practice transformed by starting to build earlier and then designing UX in tandem with development?

At the completion of each activity, we'll discuss how they exemplify Agile thinking and how they might manifest themselves in a real-life project. The workshop will also make extensive use of the meeting space to exemplify how Agile thinking manifests itself in the physical work environment.