Agile User Experience design at IBM ROBIN STAFFORD

Abstract The principles of Agile development emphasise design in small teams and rapid change. Good User Experience design requires uniformity and careful planning. The purpose of this talk is to describe practice within the Business Analytics team at IBM as they attempt to marry these 2 principles.

Agenda - High level view of agile dev process - UX challenges - team role – current - Big challenges – web versus rich versus mobile

Dev PROCESS - Agile

Every release has many priorities

UX challenges - TECHNOLOGY Lots of new technology and web frameworks eg Dojo Lots of legacy technology – C++, Eclipse, Java, SWT Lots of new platforms – mobile, tablet, iOS, Android New input techniques – eg touch screen Localisation (text length etc) Accessibilty (colour, mouse etc) BiDi. Right to left rendering. (Overall screen layout).

UX CHALLENGES - IBM IBM acquires most of its software products Integrating them is a high priority but often challenging owing to differing architectures and technology Surface branding (IBM splash screen, about box, install location etc) is deemed sufficient Deeper usability and experience issues are lower priority Existing customers don’t want it to change (retraining etc) New customers may only purchase one IBM product, BUT … Many will purchase the whole stack Competition doing a much better job around look and feel eg Oracle/Hyperion and Microsoft.

HOW Do we improve UX? Customer feedback (iterative) Prototypes evaluated IBM mandated – eg Accessibility, BiDi, Installers, Consumability IBM wide initiatives – IBM One UI, Improved error messages Business Analytics wide initiatives – BestX Dedicated UX professionals Research In the labs and conferences Persona Depot Standards Some examples …

IBM One UI

BeST X

Persona Depot

Error messages

Error messages

This experience does NOT engage 15 “Extremely Boring, No Fun, I Don’t Know”

We are trying! 16 Recently Used Favorites My Group…

Engage everywhere - consistently (Mobile, Tablet, Web)

Thank You Any Questions?