Current state of agile user-centered design: A survey

Abstract

Agile software development methods are quite popular nowadays and are being adopted at an increasing rate in the industry every year. However, these methods are still lacking usability awareness in their development lifecycle, and the integration of usability/User- Centered Design (UCD) into agile methods is not adequately addressed. This paper presents the preliminary results of a recently conducted online survey regarding the current state of the integration of agile methods and usability/UCD. A world wide response of 92 practitioners was received. The results show that the majority of practitioners perceive that the integration of agile methods with usability/UCD has added value to their adopted processes and to their teams; has resulted in the improvement of usability and quality of the product developed; and has increased the satisfaction of the end-users of the product developed. The top most used HCI techniques are low-fidelity prototyping, conceptual designs, observational studies of users, usability expert evaluations, field studies, personas, rapid iterative testing, and laboratory usability testing. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2009.