Resources for building a UI/UX team and process

Question

I'm looking for practical guidance (books, articles, blogs) on approaching team building and the development process. I'm currently running development teams using basic Agile and Scrum principals writing SMB and Enterprise business applications. Within the existing development process, we focus on requirements, implementation, validation, ... I'm looking at additional cycles that need to be performed for a user interface team to be successful.

Some examples I've considered:

• Observing software usage patterns by existing users
• Artwork development - usually in the form of icons and other images
• Usability testing
• Color schemes / look and feel (things that impress beyond functionality)

On the teaming side of the equation, I have developers that have user interface development experience, but the next stage, ideally, would be to grow those skills. Creating opportunities to experiment and learn is a start, but is there any established patterns that are effective ?

Answer 1

If you're integrating UX in an agile environment then I'd go take a look at Jeff Patton's work. Lots of useful stuff at his site http://www.agileproductdesign.com/

Anders Ramsey writes on his blog in this area http://www.andersramsay.com/

There are a couple of online groups that are particularly focussed on UX in an agile context - you'll probably get some more specific advice from folk there

• There's the agile-usability mailing list http://groups.yahoo.com/group/agile-usability (don't be fooled by the name - the community is larger than just usability)

• The Agile Experience Design LinkedIn group accessed via http://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=3315113

You also may find some of my delicious links under http://delicious.com/adrianh/agile+ux of interest - but I freely admit that the connection to agile & ux may need to be filtered through my brain to be made even vaguely clear :-)

There were some really nice sessions on integrating usability and UX in agile processes at Agile 2010 this year. In particular I think you might find three of interest:

• Jeff Gothelf's session "Beyond Staggered Sprints: Agile user experience design teams in the real world" is a really nice experience report on how he managed the transition of his UX team to an agile environment. Including their approach to usability testing -

• Cindy McCracken & Skye Pazuchanics' session "Making Usability Testing Agile" talks about their experiences integrating usability testing at iContact -

• Moses Hohman & Suzy Thompson's session "Integrating design & agile on a budget" has a nice piece on integrating regular discount usability testing in an agile process -

There are at least three agile/ux books in the works too but some really good practitioners in the area - so more useful info should be out there soon.