Values and assumptions shaping Agile development and User Experience design in practice

Abstract

Previous discussions concerned with combining User Experience (UX) design and Agile development have either focused on integrating them as two separate processes, or on incorporating techniques from UX design into an Agile context. There is still no rigorous academic view on the nature of practice in this area. Further, the many and varied settings in which Agile developers and UX designers work together, and how those settings shape their work, remain largely unexplored. We conducted two field studies to address this. The results suggest that the values and assumptions of decision-makers external to the teams shape UX/Agile practice. The current focus on processes and techniques falls short of providing the insight necessary to improve practice. Instead, our results indicate that improvement requires further explication of contextual values. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2010.