3-Steps-To-Prioritize-UX-in-Your-Development-Process

It’s true User Experience Design (UX) has a more up-front role in your agile development process, but don’t view it as a swamp through which you must wade and hope to emerge before your “normal” development process can proceed. When done correctly UX can be highly motivating and positively encouraging to your development process and team.

In addition, UX can provide clarity to the product roadmap by identifying features most important to your customers and providing increased satisfaction which translates directly and indirectly to the bottom line. So how do you include UX?

1 | Involve Your UX Team In Feature Planning

Involve the UX team in meetings when product and project managers are deciding on features. Bringing the mind and voice of the user in the room during this time brings invaluable information to the table at a critical step in the development process. There is no sense in building it if the users will not come.

And if you are going to build it, make sure it is something the users can, and will, use. In this day and age, users can afford to be fickle. If not impressed by their initial experience with your product, users can and will (quickly) find one that suits them. First impressions are lasting and second chances are rare. Here it pays to substitute guesswork for qualitative feedback.

2 | Collaboration Between UX and Development Starts With Requirements

When requirements are available it is important that the UX team immediately starts collaborating with the development team. Why? Because a great UX design is only great if development can build it. Understanding users and their needs is the job of the UX team, but if the new feature design requires a major code rewrite that blows the budget and the timeline then decisions need to be made sooner rather than later.

In addition, early collaboration gives the development team clarity on what they will be coding giving them confidence to go full steam ahead. But should questions arise, a communication channel is already established promoting feedback, discussion and quick resolution imposing the least disruption to the development sprints.

3 | Keep Your UX Team Ahead of Schedule and Test Test Test

Yes, the UX team will need a long access ramp to the agile highway. A common best practice is that the UX team be 2 or more sprints ahead of development. Don’t be fooled into thinking this process is all aesthetics. UX represents the architecture of your user’s journey on which your organization’s reputation and bottom line rely. It is during this time the UX process is in full swing testing concepts and designs to provide the target users with the most excellent experience.

Understand that this is an iterative process as the UX team seeks to better understand users. While this iterative process takes time, rounds of testing here generally cost far less than jumping straight to code and building something that will only have to be rebuilt or worse scrapped altogether, assuming your users give you that chance.

Your highest priority, according to the Agile Methodology principles, is to customer satisfaction by providing valuable software. It is also a proven fact that companies with effective UX have increased revenue which makes sense. If users like your product they will keep using it which builds brand recognition, loyalty and eventually positive reviews and recommendations in the marketplace.

Satisfied customers, increased revenue, improved market presence, product roadmap clarity, motivated development team are benefits of effectively including UX in the development process.