Agile User Experience Design: A Design Science Enquiry

This paper presents a qualitative analysis of an information systems design study within the context of agile software development based on conceptually different two design approaches: Current Agile Process (CAP) and Enhanced Agile Process (EAP). Eight agile software professionals and one user experience designer were recruited from the industry to form two small agile teams, where one agile software professional shared the product owner role in both teams. Each team undertook agile software product development based on exclusively one of the two conceptually different design approaches, CAP and EAP. Both teams used the same suite of user stories presented by the product owner. The progress of product development was assessed using four evaluation approaches: observation data comparison, debrief data comparison, individual system evaluation and comparative system evaluation. This paper presents the results of observation data comparison only. The results suggest that agile software development team that followed the enhanced agile process had more user experience focus in the design and the outcome of the product delivery proved to be somewhat richer in user experience. The paper also explores the research design, research process, developer perceptions as well as areas of shortcomings where further understanding and modelling effort is needed