Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. User Experience is certainly one of the latest buzzwords, but…what do User Experience professionals actually do?

Honestly, most UX folks, especially generalists, do a little bit of everything - from user interface design and information architecture to usability studies and market research. This workshop concentrates on one of the most important things UX professionals do: help businesses focus on the customer.

In this workshop you will roll up your sleeves and actually participate in some UX research activities. You’ll learn how even a little bit of customer interaction can lead to huge insights… and then you’ll learn how to interpret those insights and incorporate them back into your Agile project.

Information for Review Team:
In the first activity, the participants will play the role of the customer. I guide them through a couple of exercises to create an outline of what customers need and want from a product. I’ll use an accessible example, like a web application for paying a bill online.

1. In four or five areas around the room, put a piece of poster paper on the wall.
2. Split the participants into groups.
3. Have each group fill in boxes on the paper to describe the attributes of a particular kind of user but focus on the tasks that user needs or wants to accomplish (like a brand new user who needs to pay a late bill). This includes describing what helps or impedes them from doing their task. It also includes describing the user in useful ways (this person is typically early 20’s, in a hurry, has kids, etc.)
4. Rotate the groups to add/subtract/move things from the previous groups list.
   Once this is complete, I’ll demonstrate how this information can be used to create a “quick and dirty” persona, as well as describe how additional research can be combined with this activity to create a more formal persona.

Finally, I’ll lead the participants through an activity where they play the role of the business trying to prioritize stories. I’ll show them how they can use the personas to help guide them and how to help avoid common the trap of thinking that just because they know the business intimately they automatically know what the customer would need or want.

Prerequisite Knowledge:
General Agile knowledge, particularly SCRUM framework, is assumed.