How does UX fit into software development?

There are benefits to both waterfall and agile methodologies. However, when it comes to creating phenomenal user experiences, waterfall cycles tend to come up short and here is why:

The user experience on paper can be VERY different from the user’s experience. There are often things that the researcher or business analyst might suggest that only address the symptom and not the issue, or the initial interaction design fails to address a major use-case, or the visual design detracts from the usability of the product in some way. All of the members of the team across all of the disciplines involved must work together to overcome these obstacles as they arise during the product development. Because, the truth is, you are never going to be able to account for every problem or scenario in the BRD that was written three months ago.

Continue reading “How does UX fit into software development?”

Loss Aversion in Adversarial Collaboration

I’ve been reading Thinking: Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman and one of the things that really stood out to me was his presentation of loss aversion. I know that humans are loss averse, that isn’t news to me. But what I had never really thought about before was this idea in the context of adversarial collaboration in the workplace.

As a UX Strategist, almost all of my collaboration is adversarial. I am a staunch supporter of the user’s experience, sometimes to the detriment of the business plan. You might wonder, though, why that’s a problem. Shouldn’t the UX guy be supporting the user’s experience? Well, yes… but every other member of the team is a staunch supporter of their [insert focus or metric]. It is not often that every member of the team, from sales to support, is being held accountable by their supervisors for supporting or producing a positive user experience.

Continue reading “Loss Aversion in Adversarial Collaboration”

What is a UX Strategist?

I can’t really answer that question without defining the different UX disciplines and how they all work together. User Experience encompasses everything that goes into product design and use. That product could be a website, a piece of enterprise software, a kitchen appliance, or a car. Since UX includes such wide array of concepts and practical applications, there is often confusion about what a UX Strategist does (or should do). In the digital software space, UX has four primary disciplines:

  • Research
  • Interaction Design
  • Visual Design
  • Development

Continue reading “What is a UX Strategist?”