user experience

Articles

Balancing Speed with User Needs: User-Centric Agile Development Balancing Speed with User Needs: How to Avoid Sacrificing Good UX in Agile Projects

User-Centric Agile Development integrates UX research and design into the agile process to ensure user needs are met throughout development. This article debunks myths about UX in agile and outlines strategies for achieving a balance between speed and user-centered design, emphasizing the importance of communication, user-value focus, and continuous improvement. 

Osemudiamen Ineomon's picture Osemudiamen Ineomon
Phone with apps B2B Mobile Apps: Why Stability and Reliability Represent the Key Metrics for Success

Today, software vendors continue to rush the development of new B2B apps in order to capture a share of this ever-expanding market. However, it’s crucial to recognize what it takes to achieve success. In a competitive environment with high expectations, you must deliver a user-friendly app with consistent business value and reliable experiences. 

James Smith's picture James Smith
Infinity symbol Has Continuous Deployment Become a New Worst Practice?

Software development has been moving toward progressively smaller and faster development cycles, and continuous integration and continuous deployment are compressing delivery times even further. But is this actually good for businesses or their users? Just because you can deploy to production quickly and frequently, should you?

John Tyson's picture John Tyson
Tape measure Estimation: What It Takes to Deliver Consumable Value in Agile Projects

Releasing in small batches is a good way to achieve quick feedback in your sprints, but these pieces don't have all the features users need. Providing consumable value is turning those small bites into a meal, and it’s worthwhile to estimate what it will take to deliver that—asking, “What consumable value do we expect to achieve, what duration and cost should we plan for, and how likely is it that the plan will succeed?”

Andy Berner's picture Andy Berner

Better Software Magazine Articles

The Evolution of Software Monetization

End-users are demanding anytime, anywhere access to software apps on their devices. These changes are shifting the way software vendors conduct business. Michael Zunke uses the results of industry surveys to show how software products and services should be licensed.

Michael Zunke's picture Michael Zunke
Playing Games to Improve Software

You may not have heard about gamification, but instructional designers are now using game principles to help with retention of learned material in many forms of training. Ross Smith and Rajini Padmanaban believe that developers' UX and app design can benefit from gamification.

Ross Smith's picture Ross Smith Rajini Padmanaban
Incorporating User Experience into Early Agile Cycles

Chris Nodder explores the emerging need to focus on a software app's user experience. It doesn’t have to cost a fortune to perform some basic user experience analysis as long as it is done early and tested throughout a project’s lifecycle.

Chris Nodder's picture Chris Nodder
A Tale of Two Doctors and the Value Stream

Johanna Rothman compares the experience a patient has with doctors to software development. Producing value implies that the customer believes the software you create provides an important benefit by taking into  consideration the way a user works along with an exceptional user experience.

Johanna Rothman's picture Johanna Rothman

Interviews

Dona Sarkar The Glamour Is Back in Testing: An Interview with Dona Sarkar
Video

In this interview, Dona Sarkar, head of the Windows Insider Program at Microsoft, speaks about how the initiative allows them to get user feedback before final release. She highlights the importance of getting out in the field to understand your users’ experiences and the difficulties they encounter. Dona also discusses the evolution of the testing role, saying she anticipates that in the near future, testers will have their moment.

Jennifer Bonine's picture Jennifer Bonine
Janna Loeffler Testing Challenges in Creating Wearable Technology: An Interview with Janna Loeffler
Video

In this interview, Janna Loeffler, senior manager of experience quality standards at Carnival Corporation, discusses new technology being implemented on Carnival Cruise Lines to facilitate payments and security. She details the testing challenges of implementing wearable devices.

Jennifer Bonine's picture Jennifer Bonine
Finding Microefficiencies in Agile Practices: An Interview with Melissa Tondi

Melissa Tondi discusses retuning your standard agile practices to better engage the project team, enabling them to write code that will pass testing and free testers to assume the role of user advocate.

Jennifer Bonine's picture Jennifer Bonine
TJ Usiyan How Ideas and Assumptions Impact Applications: An Interview with TJ Usiyan
Podcast

In this interview, TJ Usiyan, an instructor with Iron Yard, talks about whether development and testing teams need to be on the same page. He also explains how subjectivity influences our systems and applications and why teams overlook subjectivity.

Josiah Renaudin's picture Josiah Renaudin

Conference Presentations

Agile + DevOps East Agile and DevOps Transformation in the Telecom Industry
Slideshow

The telecom industry changes rapidly, the competition is fierce, and user experience is the utmost priority. In today's world of digitization and data personalization, effective use of agility and DevOps is the key behind ensuring customer satisfaction.

Nilanjana Banerjee
STAREAST By the Reader, for the Reader: The Wall Street Journal’s Secrets to Customer-Centric Experiences
Slideshow

Readers of The Wall Street Journal have seen many stories about companies shutting their doors after years of success.

Sumeet Mandloi
STAREAST Full-Coverage Testing in Small-Business Environments
Slideshow

In small-business environments, testing is often completed in hindsight—or overlooked entirely. 

Chad Jung
STARCANADA 5 Ways to Make Load Testing Work for You
Slideshow

While organizations understand the need for load testing, and many even have the necessary tools to manage it, they still fail to execute it well and “do the job” for end-users. Frustration at a poor user experience is increased by the IT organization's failure to explain...

Israel Rogoza

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