Agile usability patterns for user-centered design final stages

Abstract

The integration between Agile Methods and User-Centered Design (UCD) has been addressed by several authors in recent years. Nevertheless, a gap remains regarding a systematically consolidated description of agile usability practices for the final stages of UCD. Our aim is to describe agile usability practices based on the literature in the form of patterns, focusing on the UCD final stages, namely “Create Design Solutions” and “Evaluate Designs”. A literature review was conducted to identify patterns of use of agile usability practices. The major results of the study presented here are the selection and classification of the usability practices for the UCD final stages within the agile community and their structured presentation in the form of patterns (Name, Context, Problem, Solution, and Examples). Presenting agile usability practices as patterns can increase their applicability; it facilitates the visualization of the similarities between the communities of UCD and Agile Methods and also presents the ideas more clearly to other communities that can benefit from using these patterns in their specific development contexts.