Agile Usability Testing

Elyse Sanchez, Friday, June 15, 2007 @ 2:05 pm

Even in waterfall-based design and development projects, formal usability testing at the time the system is being finalized is essentially “too much, too late”: a time-consuming, labor-intensive activity yielding results that are frequently unactionable for the current release. Several iterative assessment techniques, however, can be employed throughout any process, providing timely insight and direction. These techniques are readily adaptable to the Agile methodology, and, with some minor adaptations, can in fact be regarded as “agile” usability testing methods. Low-fidelity testing, using paper prototypes (or even hand sketches) can provide a quick benchmarking, and can be incorporated into a scrum meeting.

Why is usability testing important in the Agile environment?

A crucial component of the Agile methodology is the practice of obtaining customer feedback after every iteration and then making functional changes accordingly. Introducing usability assessments at key points in the process can ensure that the users’ requirements will also be recognized and accommodated within the development process, at a point when any potentially off-course decisions can be corrected and improvements implemented.

The nature of Agile development is to focus on individual features and although the project “epic” attempts to preserve the big picture for the product, this view is nevertheless focused on the functional and business requirements, rather than on the holistic user experience. Usability testing can document and validate issues that may only be the opinions of the team.

user experience design

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