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User interface Design, User Experience Designer, Usability Analyst, User Researcher

Month: November 2020

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Agile Scrum – A brief guide

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Agile Scrum: Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland how described in Scrum Guide as follows

Scrum: A framework within which people can address complex adaptive problems, while productively and creatively delivering products of the highest possible value.

  • Lightweight, Simple to understand and Difficult to master

Scrum has been used to develop software, hardware, embedded software, networks of interacting function, autonomous vehicles, schools, government, marketing, managing the operation of organizations.

Scrum is immutable, cannot be modified by organization flexibility, if modified, we lose real benefits of scrum,  it should be adhered how described in Scrum Guide

Three Pillars:  1. Transparency 2.Inspection 3. Adaptation

Scrum Values: 1. Commitment 2. Courage  3. Focus  4. Openness  5. Respect

SCRUM TEAM:

  1. Product Owner (1 person): Responsible creating product backlog items to maximize the value
    1. Product Backlog is visible, clear to all, and shows what the Scrum Team will work on next
    1. Backlog refinement/grooming can be done with help of developers, no more than 10% of the capacity of the Development Team
  2. Scrum Master (1 person): Responsible for promoting and supporting Scrum as defined in the Scrum Guide
  3. Development Team(3-9 people): Self organized team who creates working deliverable, collaborative responsibility, no sub team

SCRUM EVENTS:

  1. The Sprint:  The heart of Scrum is a Sprint, a time-box of one month or less during which a “Done”, usable, and potentially releasable product Increment is created.
    1. Sprints contain and consist of the Sprint Planning, Daily Scrums, the development work, the Sprint Review, and the Sprint Retrospective.
  2. Sprint Planning: The work to be performed in the Sprint is planned at the Sprint Planning.
    1. Sprint Planning answers the following:

• What can be delivered in the Increment resulting from the upcoming Sprint?

• How will the work needed to deliver the Increment be achieved?

  • The Product Backlog items selected for this Sprint plus the plan for delivering them is called the Sprint Backlog.
    • Participants: Scrum Team, Stakeholders, SMEs
    • Duration: Maximum 8 hours
  • Daily Scrum: The Daily Scrum is a 15-minute time-boxed event for the Development Team.
    • Developers asks three questions
      • What did I do yesterday that helped the Development Team meet the Sprint Goal?
      • What will I do today to help the Development Team meet the Sprint Goal?
      • Do I see any impediment that prevents me or the Development Team from meeting the Sprint Goal?
    • Team plans work for the next 24 hours
    • Participant: Developers only, Scrum Master ensures that the Development Team has the meeting, cannot be moderator.          
    • The Development Team or team members often meet immediately after the Daily Scrum for detailed discussions, or to adapt, or replan, the rest of the Sprint’s work.
  • Sprint Review: A Sprint Review is held at the end of the Sprint to inspect the Increment and adapt the Product Backlog if needed.
    • Presentation of the Increment is intended to elicit feedback and foster collaboration.
    • Participants: Scrum Team and Stakeholders
    • Duration: Maximum 4 Hours
  • Sprint Retrospective:
    • Inspect how the last Sprint went with regards to people, relationships, process, and tools;
    • Identify and order the major items that went well and potential improvements; and,
    • Create a plan for implementing improvements to the way the Scrum Team does its work.
    • Participants: Scrum Team (Product Owner, Scrum Master, Developer)
    • Duration: 3 Hours max

SCRUM ARTIFACTS:

  1. Product Backlog:  The Product Backlog is an ordered list of everything that is known to be needed in the product. It is the single source of requirements for any changes to be made to the product.
    1. Responsible: Product Owner
  2. Sprint Backlog: The Sprint Backlog is the set of Product Backlog items selected for the Sprint, plus a plan for delivering the product Increment and realizing the Sprint Goal.
    1. Responsible: Development team
  • Increment: The Increment is the sum of all the Product Backlog items completed during a Sprint and the value of the increments of all previous Sprints. At the end of a Sprint, the new Increment must be “Done,” which means it must be in usable condition and meet the Scrum Team’s definition of “Done”.

Video Lesson: User Centered Design(UCD)

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UCD is explicit understanding of the users, tasks and environment in which product being used

When we start create something, first we need think who is going use, what they need and expect

Empathy user  for user insights, this can be done by various research mythologies . Majorly categorized as qualitative and Quantitative research, qualitative research can be done through user interview, focus group, user observation with contextual inquiry

User Interview is an one on one session,  it can bring insights into what users think, feel and says about an application, they could share experience what they have with similar products.

User research can be set with open-ended questions  to get one or more answers, example

  • How would you describe your satisfaction with this product?
  • How do you think this product could help you?

We can encourage user by asking follow up questions if they can give you additional insight

Quantitative research is expressed in numbers and graphs. It is used to test or confirm theories and assumptions.

Common quantitative methods include experiments, observations recorded as numbers, and surveys with closed-ended questions.

Surveys formed with  List of multiple choice questions that is distributed in online, helps to collect responses remotely, some of example questions are –

  • What  are the information you wish to see in our home page
  • Do you recommend our product to your friend

Another approach  user observation, observe user activities in natural environment where we can find user problems and challenges they face . We can use think aloud protocol asking user to speak loud what they think when using existing product. This approach helps to understand user paint points, emotions and friction of interaction.

Next step, synthesis of your findings and the recommendations  and  create report which will inform personas, journey maps, feature ideas, workflow ideas , through customer journey maps, we can illustrate user pain points, challenges what user faced through entire journey in time. We can identify user problems and gives opportunity for innovation.

Brainstorm with team, create ideas for user problems and business requirements, Create wire frame , low and high fidelity  prototype to implement  ideas, validate design with stakeholders and iterate.

As a next step, validate your design with end user, important step is validating your design properly. you simply need to get feedback from relevant users. Once  you get the feedback from the users, again refine your design and test different user group so that you could get different responses , refine design until your stakeholder and user get satisfied, then finally you can start development and deliver. 

Conclusion

When  you bring users every stage of the design process, user centric approach way , we could find what works well, what doesn’t and why. Your users are an early-warning system you can use to correct and fine-tune your design. They can expose many aspects—positive and negative.

UCD approach, products are more likely to meet users’ expectations and requirements. This leads to increased sales and lower costs incurred by customer services. Putting designers in close contact with users means a deeper sense of empathy emerges. This approach saves development cost since validated our ideas and its ensures product success.

James Gibson, Don Norman: Affordance a usability principle which makes more turn around

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What is affordance ?
Affordances are properties of objects, elements which shows actions for users who interact to complete actions. Affordances are defined what actions possible to take without additional instructions.

Psychologist James Gibson coined “affordance” in 1977, stated as All Action possibilities with an object based on users’ physical capabilities
“When affordances are taken advantage of, the user knows what to do just by looking: no picture, label, or instruction needed.” — Don Norman said,

Desired actions cannot be carried out if the object does not afford it, and afforded actions might not be carried out if the user does not perceive they are possible.
“ Affordance is a relationship between the properties of an object and the capabilities of the person that determines how possibly the object to be used

Affordances represent the possibilities in the world for how the person can interact with something
For example water bottle a physical product will have different affordance for 3 years old child and 18 years old boy.
18 years old boy easily can hold and use, but 3 years old child may not hold comfortably
Possibility varies based on person capability

The presence of an affordance is jointly determined by the qualities of the object and the abilities of the agent that is interacting – Don Norman said

Digital Products
Person who familiar in websites, perceive underlined text. And blue color text as a hyperlink But who are not familiar with websites they may perceive as just decorations.
it’s important to consider how obvious your interface is to use without instruction, spelled out directions. Your design needs to be usable and intuitive without holding your user’s hand at every step.

Types of Affordance
1) perceptible affordance is characteristics of the object itself indicate what action possibilities are available and desired . A raised button that says ‘Click me’ is a great example of both language and physical cues. Water bottle handle conveys user to take and hold

3) Hidden affordance
the actual affordance isn’t available until an action has been taken to reveal it.
For instance, hovering over a button to see whether its active or not.
you don’t see the drop down menu unless you hover or click on the parent list item.
Hidden affordances are used to simplify and reduce visual complexity of a design.

4) False affordance
User perceive underline text as hyperlink if user find its broken link then it’s a false affordance. Colors have specific associations with them. example, green is success while red is fail . When you change this color pattern , user might be confused who already familiar with standard one

5) Negative affordance
Negative – You block users from proceeding towards a goal when they must provide more data – e.g., a disabled “register” button remains until users fill all mandatory inputs.

kathirg.com | UX Design Project Management Consultant | Agile Scrum who coach empiricism framework from Chennai Tamilnadu India