Syntagm > Design for Usability > Courses | Agile User-Centred Design

Overview

Agile development can be extremely effective in producing business-focussed solutions but special care must be taken to include user experience and usability through user-centred techniques.

This one-day course shows how to integrate User-Centred Design with Agile methods such as Scrum to create great user experience. The course builds on our research into empathizing skills and takes an 'emotionally intelligent' approach to selling UCD within technology-led teams.

On this page:

• » Duration
• » Benefits
• » Features
• » Audience
• » Participants' comments
• » Instructor

Duration

Full day (9:30 pm to 5:00 pm)

Benefits

You will learn how to address usability and user experience within an Agile team through the persuasive use of user-centred design techniques and quantitative evidence.

• Understanding Agile, users and the relationship between them
• Promoting empathy with UCD techniques (empathetic design)
• Knowing what evidence will be most effective (persuasive facilitation)
• Adding value to an Agile team with UCD
• Extensive bibliography and further reading

Features

• 'Up-front' versus Agile UCD
• Conceptual models
• Personas
• User stories
• Usability testing
• UX maturity of Agile teams
• Outsourcing UCD activities
• Adding value to the Agile team
• Scenarios
• Design maps, sketches and wireframes

Audience

Usability, UX and UCD practitioners trying to integrate UCD activities within Agile teams. (Managers and others are welcome to attend, but some familiarity with UCD techniques is required.)

Participants' comments

• I attended your workshop and wanted to let you know that some of your ideas have been extremely helpful for my company. We've done a complete 360 from waterfall to agile and everyone's loving it. Thanks!!! -- Maria Emerson, User Experience Manger
• Excellent, well paced
• Fully met my needs on how to use UX techniques in Agile development
• Instructor was very, very good at presenting and very knowledgeable

Instructor

William Hudson is a User Experience Strategist who consults, writes and teaches in the fields of user-centred design, user experience and usability. He has over 40 years experience in the development of interactive systems, initially with a background in software engineering. William was the product and user interface designer for the Emmy-award-winning "boujou"; now an indispensable tool in major film studios. He has specialized in interaction design and human-computer interaction since the late 1980's. William has written and taught courses that have been presented to hundreds of software and web developers, designers and managers in the UK, North America and Europe. He is the founder and principal consultant of Syntagm, a consultancy specializing in the design of interactive systems established in 1985.

William has presented papers, talks and tutorials at a number of international conferences including CHI, UPA and Nielsen Norman Group Usability Week.

William has worked with a wide variety of clients, from startups to established multi-nationals (click here to see our client list). He is was the courses co-chair for CHI 2013 and is the creator of persona stories.