Like a majority of folks, I generally read Jakob Nielsen’s articles with some skepticism. But in this case it’s an insightful read and worth the time and money to purchase this article:

Agile User Experience Projects by Jakob Nielsen

There are some good points raised in this article in regards to approaching an “Agile” like process. One obvious point to raise is that “Agile” was originally developed to help expedite engineering teams with ever changing requirements. Creating a mental model of a marine of sorts. Adapt, prioritize and overcome if you will.

This same process and mental model is advantageous to the UX portion of product development. But again it’s not a science it’s an approach/framework of a process. I am by no means an expert, and I should of stated this upfront ,  but my experience has taught me that a combination of a waterfall and agile seems to work the best.

A waterfall inevitably turns into an agile process at some point during it’s lifespan and I liken that transformation as a “fire drill”. Which sometimes is not a bad thing. That last 5% of the development seems to be where things really take shape and succeed or linger and fall flat.

Whereas if you separate out UX & development you can allow the UX team to get ahead of the curve. Thus allowing the UX team to get far enough along that they can generate informative & useful deliverables for the client and engineering teams. So by combining the two approaches you have a shortened waterfall that turns into a “controlled burn”. It’s in the “control burn” that the design & development teams are reacting to each other along with the business owners

For allot of you reading this, this is not a new or revolutionary idea. But rather a mindset that we have been using to design new digital experiences for some years now. For me, this notion of ‘Playful Design/Development’ was introduced during me collegiate years by an interactive artist by the name of David Rokeby. I had the pleasure of attending David’s presentation/lecture on his “Very Nervous System”. This for me was one of the most influential lectures about his creative process. If you’re not up on David’s work, you can always googlize him on the WWW. Or better yet, check out this video:

David’s process in creating this timeless experience had an extraordinary influence over the way I approach design/business problems to date. It’s essence is the idea of going from concept to prototype and then using the system to help inform and prioritize the next iteration of the concept.

I remember when I started designing interfaces for cd-rom experiences (circa 1995, Macromind Director). I would start off sketching on paper the various design ideas for the various states of the interface. As soon as I had a couple strong directions sketched out, I would then cut out these states and try to see how I might flow from one state to the next. Sound FX included This was such a great exercise in helping to visually brainstorm with the other team members. As well as poke wholes in the grid structure that I was using as my underlying framework for the interface.

Now that Flash Catalyst is almost a release candidate, I think it would be useful for me and hopefully others that I start to capture my experiences with this product and how I will use it as part of our design teams process at R/GA - San Francisco.

To see the full list of “Killer Apps for Microsoft Surface”, just click here stupid.