Agile / UX
- Do regular user testing
- “mom test” your project - put it in front of a non-computer literate person to see if it is intuitive.
- Prioritize your features - develop just one or two features at a time, but polish them for your user by the end of your iteration.
- consider a user research phase. Go out and figure out what your target audience needs. Learn what your users will want before you decide on the features of your system.
- From a UX perspective, the users goals should not be framed in terms of a particular tech solution. You want to understand your users goals before you decide on a system that will solve them, or you'll get tunnel vision.
Tips
- find a user who is similar in mindset to your end user, and test against that person.
- It is ideal to have a end user (customer, or customer advocate) in the loop daily. If that's not possible, try to at least meet with that person on regular intervals.
- To test against a working web prototype…
- there are some tips coming from the book “don't make me think”
- it's helpful to let the user be alone in a room using a computer with screencapture and a webcam - record their actions as they go through the test scenarios
- on your test sheet, don't use the terminology from your website when describing the user tasks.
- Steve Krug's “Don't Make Me Think” recommended as good book for understanding usability