Cross posted.

When: Tuesday March 9, 2010 from 6:30pm - 10:00pm
Where: iCrossing, Brighton, Moore House, 13 Black Lion Street,
Brighton, England BN1 1ND

Book your place: http://bit.ly/cJeIxY

What’s the format?
A slightly different format this time – a series of very short talks
(5-15 minutes long) with a focus on practical tips, techniques and
templates you can use in your everyday work.

Who’s presenting?
* Harry Brignull (UX Consultant, Madgex): “An easy but effective
technique for note-taking and analysis in usability testing” (10 mins)
* Ifraz Mughal (UX Consultant, iCrossing): “The iCrossing Connected
Brand index: how to measure a brand’s effectiveness online” (10 mins)
* Danny Hope (Freelance UX Consultant): “A simple template for social
media planning” (5 mins)
* Ben Greenfield (Freelance iPhone games developer): “Design
considerations when porting point and click games to multitouch, and
some thoughts on designing for the iPad” (15 mins)
* We may have one more mystery speaker giving a 5 minute talk on
either A/B testing or practical analytics (TBC)

--
Danny Hope
User Experience Design, Brighton UK
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/dannyhope
+44 (0)7595 226 792

Hi Tim

benefits of an agile approach, are not obvious, if you are new to it, and it
does take time to win the client/stakeholder(s) over sometimes.

the Analysis, happens early on, this is true, but it is not shallow, if anything
it is deeper than traditional approaches.

1. Team based meetings that are designed to generate awareness of the project,
as a whole.

2. Team meetings to establish the weight of each component of the project, adds
another level of project awareness through the team.

3. Indepth consideration of each component, breaking it down into
independant/dependant/critical/non-critical elements

these 3 stages of project understanding are so beneficial, and when you involve
all the people and utilise the idea of open questions, the team can get great
focus and direction.

4. Sprints, quick daily catchups, can seem daunting, commiting 20 minutes each
day, but, again these are so beneficial, because indirectly each team member
that is having an active part at the time in the sprint, gets direct feedback.

in fact the only potential obstacles to an agile project work method, are the
people involved. - awareness of the methodology is best gained through taking
the plunge and trying it.  We got an external agency in to train up the scrum
masters.

Good times

Chris

--- In agile-usability@yahoogroups.com, Tim Wright <sambo.shacklock@...> wrote:
>
> Here's a question that's been in the back of my mind for some time now:
>
> If the only up front analysis work you do is enough stories for the first
> iteration, how do you estimate the cost of the project so that the sponser
> can determine if the project has a worthwhile cost/benefit ratio?
>
> Tim
>
> On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 7:07 AM, William Pietri <william@...> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > On 02/26/2010 08:09 AM, Alla Zollers wrote:
> > > Hi Everyone --
> > >
> > > I am a designer currently working on an agile project and we are in
> > iteration 0, the story discovery phase. The team has been using story
> > trawling to discover all the various stories, and it has worked to a degree,
> > but after some of the basic CRUD stories have been written, the more complex
> > flows honestly require more thought and perhaps a wireframe to truly flesh
> > out all the functionality. [...]
> >
> > >
> > > I guess this bring to the forefront my biggest discomfort with agile,
> > there is thought that needs to go into design and functionality, but when do
> > you do this? and how do you involve the whole team?
> > >
> >
> > Hi, Alla. A lot of people will have answers on this. Here's mine.
> >
> > My main thought is that if you are doing it right, the team should never
> > stop thinking about design and functionality, about whole products and
> > real users. Unfortunately, a lot of people making a waterfall transition
> > bring along dangerous habits, like concentrating design thinking in an
> > up-front phase, or trying to discover all the stories before starting.
> >
> > My experience is that the minimum you need to start the first iteration
> > is to have enough stories defined that the team has at least an
> > iteration's worth of work to do. That's it. Generally, that won't be a
> > lot, as things are slow-going at the start. As that work proceeds, the
> > product and design folks start fleshing out a sensible backlog. The
> > backlog, in turn, makes it clear what research, what design, what
> > thinking needs to happen so that the team is ready for future iterations.
> >
> > One of my teams is on something like iteration 163 right now, and shows
> > no signs of stopping. There's no way that up front they could have
> > discovered all the stories that they have done, let alone the ones that
> > they will do going forward. And if they had tried, a lot of the work
> > would have been wrong: the best designs come from the best information,
> > and the later you are in the project, the more information you have.
> >
> > So instead of creating a plan and trusting it, put your faith in the
> > team's ability to learn, to discover, to create. The shift that you need
> > to make is from being plan-driven to being planning-driven. Which might
> > sound like a small step, but it's a scary one: you're giving up the
> > thing that made you feel safe before, and you haven't yet experienced
> > success with the new approach.
> >
> > William
> >
> >
> >
>

As somebody who is deeply involved in internet startups, I've been very
excited lately by the rise of the Lean Startup movement. Basically, it
combines Agile development with a raft of business-side practices into
an integrated process for creating a new product. The core feedback loop
looks like this:

http://www.ashmaurya.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/buildmeasurelearn.jpg

I really like the balance between research, design, and construction
suggested there.


I mention this because of this relevant article from Steve Blank, "Death
by Competitive Analysis":

http://entrepreneur.venturebeat.com/2010/03/03/death-by-competitive-analysis/

It has an interesting take on a theme that has come up here a lot:
understanding real user needs. In particular, it talks about a classic
product design mistake: taking a competitive analysis document and
turning that in a list of features for the first version of a product.
Instead, he strongly encourages going out and engaging with actual
customers to understand their needs.

That's nominally an obvious theme, but having seen people make exactly
this mistake, I really enjoyed the article.

William

Having done 2 startups - one that failed one that went public
(www.triconex.com)- I know of no other way to get the first article.
Is these really "new" in the sense that it is a new way of doing start ups?

Glen Alleman

-----Original Message-----
From: agile-usability@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:agile-usability@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of William Pietri
Sent: Wednesday, March 03, 2010 12:08 PM
To: agile-usability@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [agile-usability] Death by competitive analysis


As somebody who is deeply involved in internet startups, I've been very
excited lately by the rise of the Lean Startup movement. Basically, it
combines Agile development with a raft of business-side practices into
an integrated process for creating a new product. The core feedback loop
looks like this:

http://www.ashmaurya.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/buildmeasurelearn.jpg

I really like the balance between research, design, and construction
suggested there.


I mention this because of this relevant article from Steve Blank, "Death
by Competitive Analysis":

http://entrepreneur.venturebeat.com/2010/03/03/death-by-competitive-analysis
/

It has an interesting take on a theme that has come up here a lot:
understanding real user needs. In particular, it talks about a classic
product design mistake: taking a competitive analysis document and
turning that in a list of features for the first version of a product.
Instead, he strongly encourages going out and engaging with actual
customers to understand their needs.

That's nominally an obvious theme, but having seen people make exactly
this mistake, I really enjoyed the article.

William


------------------------------------

Yahoo! Groups Links

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Having done 2 startups - one that failed one that went public
(www.triconex.com)- I know of no other way to get the first article.
Is these really "new" in the sense that it is a new way of doing start ups?

• It's more extreme than XP. For example, instead of just Continuous Integration, the Lean Startup approach recommends Continuous Deployment, where you push to production on every checkin. IMVU, for example, releases  ~50x/day.
• There are no requirements; there are only hypotheses in need of testing.
• It is focused on users, customers, and markets, rather than grand visions or product plans.
• It has a heavy dose of Lean, especially in its approach to cycle time, bug reduction, process refinement, and waste reduction.
• Rather than a generic software development process, it is an integrated approach to creating a company, with the focus on inventing/discovering a new product.
  
• It is specifically for creating new products, often ones that disrupt existing markets.
  
• It avoids the "achieving a failure" scenario [1] of big-bang startups.
• It splits the process into two different phases: before and after product-market fit is demonstrated.
• Average capital requirements are substantially lower.
• With its concept of a pivot (radical change in product direction based on feedback), it explicitly encourages a learning-oriented approach to product creation.
• Its focus on minimum viable product (MVP) strongly encourages release-early, release-often behavior.

The big false positive in this argument is the continuous deployment.  Remember the annoying browser wars with the unending interruptions to using the web caused by the incessant and annoying updates?  That is one reason, but the best is when your customers call and beg you to stop sending them stuff because they cannot absorb it as quickly as you can deliver it up.  You have to keep in mind that you are part of a supply chain for information use.  What you deliver needs to be integrated into your customer’s environment.  Now this may sound strange but it happens when you start dealing with groups of users.

There truly is not a lot new here. Most of agile is borrowed from design (iterative work, early prototypes, user testing, mini-meetings... et al) and the notion of being in the field with customers... well doh... designers in chicago adopted ethnographic methods back in the early 90's.

Hello, William.  On Wednesday, March 3, 2010, at 9:54:41 PM, you
wrote:

> Democracy isn't new either -- the ancient Greeks rightly get credit in
> the footnotes -- but I still think it's reasonable to be excited that a
> couple billion people have started using it and making it work in the
> last two centuries.

I just wish we could learn it in the USA ... :)

Ron Jeffries
www.XProgramming.com
www.xprogramming.com/blog
Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.  -- Meister Eckhart

Perhaps a discussion on the difference between a Repbulic and Democracy
would be a good first start, but that would be a major step into this Rabbit
Hole.


Mike Dwyer
"Planning constantly peers into the future for indications as to where a
solution may emerge."
"A Plan is a complex situation, adapting to an emerging solution." 
-----Original Message-----
From: agile-usability@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:agile-usability@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Ron Jeffries
Sent: Wednesday, March 03, 2010 11:32 PM
To: agile-usability@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [agile-usability] Death by competitive analysis

Hello, William.  On Wednesday, March 3, 2010, at 9:54:41 PM, you
wrote:

> Democracy isn't new either -- the ancient Greeks rightly get credit in
> the footnotes -- but I still think it's reasonable to be excited that a
> couple billion people have started using it and making it work in the
> last two centuries.

I just wish we could learn it in the USA ... :)

Ron Jeffries
www.XProgramming.com
www.xprogramming.com/blog
Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.  -- Meister Eckhart



------------------------------------

Yahoo! Groups Links

Would love to hear from some of you on this issue – I manage a UX team that is
in an agile driven organization, has been for 2-3 years now.  As the demand for
UX services from my team rises (a good thing!) our ability to be spread across
multiple agile project teams is wearing the team out and making them feel like a
casualty of agile and processes that leave us out because there is not enough of
us to go around. (a bad thing!)  We are only one deep in interaction design and
visual design (in the process of trying to find a new person with visual and
intearctive design competencies...but still quite thinly resourced.)

At any given time, there may be 4-5 agile projects underway (or more) and my
team members have to participate in scrums for all these teams, meetings for all
these teams, and still manage to do the work.  Its a major burnout factor.  In
addition, it is hard to maintain a higher level organizational visibility of the
capacity of my team to ensure we prioritize their time to the most important
projects.  I spend a tone of time managing this via Microsoft TFS to keep a
higher level visibility of this.

In any case, would love to hear if anyone else has been there, done that and how
you solved this conundrum?

On 03/04/2010 12:09 PM, j_cabinaw wrote:
> Would love to hear from some of you on this issue – I manage a UX team that is
in an agile driven organization, has been for 2-3 years now.  As the demand for
UX services from my team rises (a good thing!) our ability to be spread across
multiple agile project teams is wearing the team out and making them feel like a
casualty of agile and processes that leave us out because there is not enough of
us to go around. (a bad thing!)  We are only one deep in interaction design and
visual design (in the process of trying to find a new person with visual and
intearctive design competencies...but still quite thinly resourced.)
>

I don't have any magic solutions, but I did want to tell you that this
is a common problem.

A good Agile adoption should increase development output, make the need
for UX help more obvious, and increase the frequency with which teams
can apply UX skills. All of which are definitely good things, but, as
you say, with consequences. The main upside of your situation is that in
an Agile context, you should eventually be able to invest less time in
expensive design artifacts.

The companies I see doing best at this have a designer (or more)
assigned to each team, embedded within it. That person may not be able
to do everything themselves, but they handle what the can, get
intimately involved with the project, and know when and how to involve
other designers in the company. Trulia and YouTube are two examples of
that where I know the designers are happy.

When there aren't enough designers to go around, the most common
adaptations I see are spreading designers too thin, letting average
design quality decline, and having the most design-oriented person on
the team act as in-house designer and bridge to the UX group.

Forced to pick one, I'd go with the last, because then the problem is at
least obvious. But mainly I'd hire more designers.

William

Hi,

Of course the best would be if ux resources would be part of the teams
but you lack the resources.

Look like you have to organise your capacity in a lean way. Maybe have
a look at kanban and put up the requests from various teams as cards.
A max number of cards can pass through your process and thus
management will need to prioritise.

another idea could be to coach and guide the actual team members to
produce better ux themselves.

Good luck!

2010/3/4, j_cabinaw <julie@...>:
> Would love to hear from some of you on this issue – I manage a UX team that
> is in an agile driven organization, has been for 2-3 years now.  As the
> demand for UX services from my team rises (a good thing!) our ability to be
> spread across multiple agile project teams is wearing the team out and
> making them feel like a casualty of agile and processes that leave us out
> because there is not enough of us to go around. (a bad thing!)  We are only
> one deep in interaction design and visual design (in the process of trying
> to find a new person with visual and intearctive design competencies...but
> still quite thinly resourced.)
>
> At any given time, there may be 4-5 agile projects underway (or more) and my
> team members have to participate in scrums for all these teams, meetings for
> all these teams, and still manage to do the work.  Its a major burnout
> factor.  In addition, it is hard to maintain a higher level organizational
> visibility of the capacity of my team to ensure we prioritize their time to
> the most important projects.  I spend a tone of time managing this via
> Microsoft TFS to keep a higher level visibility of this.
>
> In any case, would love to hear if anyone else has been there, done that and
> how you solved this conundrum?
>
>

--
Verzonden vanaf mijn mobiele apparaat

Met vriendelijke groet,

Marius van Dam
---
mariusvandam@...

One approach to addressing this is UX Office Hours, in which each team
produces ux/ui solutions without a ux specialist or with minimal
involvement, and can then have ux specialists available during
rhythmic office hours to review, provide feedback and facilitate an
overall consistent vision/concept.

This allows the team to own the ux and a smaller number of specialists
to oversee a larger range of work.

-Anders

Sent from my iPhone

On Mar 4, 2010, at 4:47 PM, Marius van Dam <mariusvandam@...>
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Of course the best would be if ux resources would be part of the teams
> but you lack the resources.
>
> Look like you have to organise your capacity in a lean way. Maybe have
> a look at kanban and put up the requests from various teams as cards.
> A max number of cards can pass through your process and thus
> management will need to prioritise.
>
> another idea could be to coach and guide the actual team members to
> produce better ux themselves.
>
> Good luck!
>
> 2010/3/4, j_cabinaw <julie@...>:
>> Would love to hear from some of you on this issue – I manage a UX
>> team that
>> is in an agile driven organization, has been for 2-3 years now.  As
>> the
>> demand for UX services from my team rises (a good thing!) our
>> ability to be
>> spread across multiple agile project teams is wearing the team out
>> and
>> making them feel like a casualty of agile and processes that leave
>> us out
>> because there is not enough of us to go around. (a bad thing!)  We
>> are only
>> one deep in interaction design and visual design (in the process of
>> trying
>> to find a new person with visual and intearctive design
>> competencies...but
>> still quite thinly resourced.)
>>
>> At any given time, there may be 4-5 agile projects underway (or
>> more) and my
>> team members have to participate in scrums for all these teams,
>> meetings for
>> all these teams, and still manage to do the work.  Its a major
>> burnout
>> factor.  In addition, it is hard to maintain a higher level
>> organizational
>> visibility of the capacity of my team to ensure we prioritize their
>> time to
>> the most important projects.  I spend a tone of time managing this
>> via
>> Microsoft TFS to keep a higher level visibility of this.
>>
>> In any case, would love to hear if anyone else has been there, done
>> that and
>> how you solved this conundrum?
>>
>>
>
> --
> Verzonden vanaf mijn mobiele apparaat
>
> Met vriendelijke groet,
>
> Marius van Dam
> ---
> mariusvandam@...
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>

Dear all,

[apologies for cross-postings]

I\'ve compiled a list of conference dates/deadlines with relevance to our
community. I aim to send an updated overview every once in a while.

There\'s a printerfriendly version (for hanging on your wall at
http://www.interaction-design.org/calendar/printerfriendly.html)

If you feel something is missing, or if you find errors, please go to
http://www.interaction-design.org/calendar/ and make additions or corrections.

---------------------------------------------------
ICDIP 2010 - The 2nd International Conference on Digital Image Processing
Singapore
From Feb 26 to Feb 28 2010

Deadline(s):
15 September 2010: Full Paper Submission Deadline
5 October 2010: Notification of Acceptance
25 October 2010: Authors\' Registration and Final Papers

More info on http://www.icdip.org/

---------------------------------------------------
5th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction
Osaka, Japan
From Mar 02 to Mar 05 2010

Deadline(s):

More info on http://hri2010.org/

---------------------------------------------------
WritersUA Conference for Software User Assistance
Seattle, WA, USA
From Mar 21 to Mar 24 2010

Deadline(s):

More info on http://www.writersua.com/ohc/index.html

---------------------------------------------------
ETRA 2010 - Eye Tracking Research and Applications Symposium
Austin, TX, USA
From Mar 22 to Mar 24 2010

Deadline(s):
30 September 2009: Full paper abstract deadline
7 October 2009: Full paper deadline

More info on http://www.e-t-r-a.org/

---------------------------------------------------
Workshop on Pervasive healthcare in the home : Supporting patient motivation and
engagement
Munich, Germany
From Mar 22 to Mar 22 2010

Deadline(s):
20 January 2010: Submission deadline

More info on http://www.ph-home.org

---------------------------------------------------
SIDeR 2010 - Ingredients in Gradients - 6th edition of the Student Interaction
Design Research Conference
Umeaa, Sweden
From Mar 24 to Mar 26 2010

Deadline(s):
31 January 2010: Deadline for submission

More info on http://www.ingredientsingradients.com

---------------------------------------------------
IEEE Students\' Technology Symposium 2010
IIT Kharagpur
From Apr 03 to Apr 04 2010

Deadline(s):
1 January 1970: Paper Submission Deadline
15 January 2010: Acceptance Notification
15 March 2010: Camera Ready Submission

More info on http://www.techsym.in

---------------------------------------------------
Information Architecture Summit
Phoenix, Arizona
From Apr 07 to Apr 11 2010

Deadline(s):
[Date unavailable]: Closed til 2011

More info on http://2010.iasummit.org/

---------------------------------------------------
CHI 2010 Conference
Atlanta, Georgia, USA
From Apr 10 to Apr 15 2010

Deadline(s):
17 July 2009: Workshop proposals due -
http://www.chi2010.org/authors/cfp-workshops.html
17 September 2009: Papers and Notes Due -
http://www.chi2010.org/authors/cfp-papers.html
3 October 2009: Case Studies Due -
http://www.chi2010.org/authors/cfp-case-studies.html
9 October 2009: Panels (http://www.chi2010.org/authors/cfp-panels.html)

More info on http://chi2010.org

---------------------------------------------------
ACM CHI 2009 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Atlanta, Georgia, USA
From Apr 10 to Apr 15 2010

Deadline(s):
17 July 2009: Course Proposals - http://www.chi2010.org/authors/cfp-courses.html
17 September 2009: Papers and Notes -
http://www.chi2010.org/authors/cfp-papers.html
9 October 2009: Panels - http://www.chi2010.org/authors/cfp-panels.html

More info on http://chi2010.org

---------------------------------------------------
SimAUD - Symposium on Simulation for Architecture and Urban Design 2010
Orlando, Florida, USA
From Apr 12 to Apr 15 2010

Deadline(s):
20 November 2009: Abstract Deadline
27 November 2009: Submission Deadline

More info on http://www.simaud.org/

---------------------------------------------------
2010 International Conference on Traffic and Logistic Engineering (ICTLE 2010)
Bangkok, Thailand
From Apr 23 to Apr 25 2010

Deadline(s):
1 January 1970: Submission Deadline

More info on http://www.ictle.org/

---------------------------------------------------
HUMOUS 10
Toulouse, France
From Apr 26 to Apr 27 2010

Deadline(s):
1 January 1970: Abstract submission
15 March 2010: Full paper due-date

More info on http://projets.isae.fr/humous-10

---------------------------------------------------
SUITE 2010 - Search-driven software development: Users, Infrastructure, Tools
and Evaluation
Cape Town, South Africa
From May 01 to May 01 2010

Deadline(s):
19 January 2010: Submission Deadline

More info on http://scg.unibe.ch/wiki/events/suite2010

---------------------------------------------------
STC Summit 2010 - the Society for Technical Communication conference
Dallas, Texas
From May 02 to May 05 2010

Deadline(s):
1 January 1970: Submission Deadline

More info on http://conference.stc.org

---------------------------------------------------
FMX 2010, the 15th Conference on Animation, Effects, Games and Interactive Media
Stuttgart, Germany
From May 04 to May 07 2010

Deadline(s):

More info on http://www.fmx.de

---------------------------------------------------
Lift10 - Connected People
Geneva, Switzerland
From May 05 to May 07 2010

Deadline(s):

More info on http://liftconference.com/lift10

---------------------------------------------------
UX Lx - User Experience Lisbon
Lisbon, Portugal
From May 12 to May 14 2010

Deadline(s):
31 January 2010: Open Sessions Submission Deadline

More info on http://www.ux-lx.com

---------------------------------------------------
GRAPP - 5th International Conference on Computer Graphics Theory and
Applications
Angers, France
From May 17 to May 21 2010

Deadline(s):
12 January 2010: Regular Paper Submission
4 February 2010: Authors Notification
16 February 2010: Final Paper Submission and Registration

More info on http://grapp.visigrapp.org

---------------------------------------------------
IMAGAPP - 2nd International Conference on Imaging Theory and Applications
Angers, France
From May 17 to May 21 2010

Deadline(s):
12 January 2010: Regular Paper Submission
4 February 2010: Authors Notification
16 February 2010: Final Paper Submission and Registration

More info on http://imagapp.visigrapp.org/

---------------------------------------------------
VISIGRAPP 2010 - International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and
Computer Graphics Theory and Applications
Angers, France
From May 17 to May 21 2010

Deadline(s):
12 January 2010: Regular Paper Submission
4 February 2010: Authors Notification
16 February 2010: Final Paper Submission and Registration

More info on http://www.visigrapp.org/

---------------------------------------------------
Pervasive 2010 - The Eighth International Conference on Pervasive Computing
Helsinki, Finland
From May 17 to May 20 2010

Deadline(s):
15 February 2010: Posters, demos, videos deadline

More info on http://www.pervasive2010.org

---------------------------------------------------
IVAPP 2010 - International Conference on Information Visualization Theory and
Applications
Angers, France
From May 17 to May 21 2010

Deadline(s):
12 January 2010: Regular Paper Submission
4 February 2010: Authors Notification
16 February 2010: Final Paper Submission and Registration

More info on http://ivapp.visigrapp.org

---------------------------------------------------
VISAPP - 5th International Conference on Computer Vision Theory and Applications
Angers, France
From May 17 to May 21 2010

Deadline(s):
12 January 2010: Regular Paper Submission
4 February 2010: Authors Notification
16 February 2010: Final Paper Submission and Registration

More info on http://visapp.visigrapp.org

---------------------------------------------------
WebVisions 2010
Portland, Oregon, USA
From May 19 to May 21 2010

Deadline(s):
1 January 1970: Submission Deadline

More info on http://www.webvisionsevent.com/

---------------------------------------------------
GI 2010 - 36th Graphics Interaction Conference
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
From May 31 to Jun 02 2010

Deadline(s):
1 January 1970: Paper Submission Deadline
21 April 2010: Poster Submission Deadline

More info on http://scs.carleton.ca/gi2010

---------------------------------------------------
3DTV CON 2010
Tampere, Finland
From Jun 07 to Jun 09 2010

Deadline(s):
12 February 2010: Submission Deadline

More info on http://sp.cs.tut.fi/3dtv-con2010/

---------------------------------------------------
ICEIS - 12th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems
Funchal, Portugal
From Jun 08 to Jun 12 2010

Deadline(s):
21 January 2010: Regular Paper Submission
8 March 2010: Authors Notification (regular papers)
24 March 2010: Final Regular Paper Submission and Registration

More info on http://www.iceis.org

---------------------------------------------------
IDC 2010 - The 9th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children
Barcelona, Spain
From Jun 09 to Jun 12 2010

Deadline(s):
18 January 2010: Submission deadline

More info on http://www.iua.upf.edu/idc2010/

---------------------------------------------------
EuroITV 2010 - 8th European Conference on Interactive TV and Video
Tampere, Finland
From Jun 09 to Jun 11 2010

Deadline(s):
1 January 1970: Call for targeted workshops, general workshops, and tutorials
1 January 1970: Call for full papers
7 February 2010: Call for short papers and posters
21 February 2010: Call for doctoral consortium contributions
21 March 2010: Call for industrial exhibitions
1 April 2010: Call for content and art contributions and EuroITV Competition
Grand Challange Entries

More info on http://www.euroitv2010.org

---------------------------------------------------
EuroVis 2010 - Eurographics/IEEE Symposium on Visualization
Bordeaux, France
From Jun 09 to Jun 11 2010

Deadline(s):
9 April 2010: Poster submission deadline

More info on http://www.eurovis.org

---------------------------------------------------
ACM Hypertext 2010
Toronto, Canada
From Jun 13 to Jun 16 2010

Deadline(s):
14 February 2010: Paper submission deadline
22 April 2010: Early Registration Deadline

More info on http://www.ht2010.og

---------------------------------------------------
7th International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics
(ICINCO 2010)
Funchal, Madeira - Portugal
From Jun 15 to Jun 18 2010

Deadline(s):
3 February 2010: Regular Paper Submission
17 March 2010: Authors Notification (Regular Papers)
31 March 2010: Final Regular Paper Submission and Registration

More info on http://www.icinco.org/

---------------------------------------------------
Engineering Patterns for Multi-Touch Interfaces 2010
Berlin, Germany
From Jun 20 to Jun 20 2010

Deadline(s):
15 March 2010: Submission deadline

More info on http://research.edm.uhasselt.be/~ep-muti2010/

---------------------------------------------------
UMAP 2010 - 18th International Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and
Personalization
Big Island, Hawaii, U.S.A
From Jun 20 to Jun 24 2010

Deadline(s):
1 January 1970: Workshop / Tutorial Proposals Deadline
11 January 2010: Submission Deadline
18 January 2010: Doctoral Consortium Paper Deadline
18 May 2010: Posters and Demos Deadline

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---------------------------------------------------
EICS 2010 - ACM Symposium on Engineering Interactive Computing Systems
Berlin, Germany
From Jun 21 to Jun 23 2010

Deadline(s):
18 January 2010: Submission deadline for all categories except late breaking
results
20 March 2010: Submission deadline for late breaking results

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---------------------------------------------------
JCDL10-ICADL10 - Joint Conference on Digital Libraries 2010 and the
International Conference on Asia-Pacific Digital Libraries
Gold Coast, Australia
From Jun 21 to Jun 25 2010

Deadline(s):

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---------------------------------------------------
International Conference on Information Society (i-Society 2010), Technically
Co-Sponsored by IEEE UK/RI Computer Chapter
London, UK
From Jun 28 to Jun 30 2010

Deadline(s):
1 January 1970: Submission Deadline
15 March 2010: Camera Ready Paper Due

More info on http://www.i-society.eu

---------------------------------------------------
Seacube 2010 - 2nd International Workshop on Sensing and Acting in Ubiquitous
Environments
Bradford, UK
From Jun 29 to Jul 01 2010

Deadline(s):
5 March 2010: Submission Deadline (extended)

More info on http://seacube.org

---------------------------------------------------
Create10 conference
Edinburgh, Uk
From Jun 30 to Jul 02 2010

Deadline(s):
15 March 2010: 2 page proposals for all other submissions

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---------------------------------------------------
EVA London 2010 - Electronic Visualisation and the Arts
London, UK
From Jul 05 to Jul 07 2010

Deadline(s):
15 January 2010: Call For Proposals

More info on http://www.eva-conferences.com/eva_london

---------------------------------------------------
NDT 2010 - Second International Conference on Networked Digital Technologies
Prague, Czech Republic
From Jul 06 to Jul 08 2010

Deadline(s):
1 May 2010: Submission Deadline

More info on http://www.dirf.org/ndt2010/

---------------------------------------------------
DSS 2010 - 15th IFIP WG 8.3 International Conference on Decision Support Systems
Lisbon, Portugal
From Jul 07 to Jul 10 2010

Deadline(s):
30 January 2010: Submission Deadline

More info on http://dss2010.di.fc.ul.pt

---------------------------------------------------
IWIPS 2010 - International Workshop on Internationlisation of Producs System
London, England
From Jul 07 to Jul 10 2010

Deadline(s):
15 March 2010: Submission Deadline Extended

More info on http://www.iwips2010.org/

---------------------------------------------------
WikiSym 2010: International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration
Gdansk, Poland
From Jul 07 to Jul 09 2010

Deadline(s):
3 March 2010: Submission Deadline (research papers)
21 March 2010: Submission Deadline (Doc. Symposium, workshops, demos/tutorials,
etc.)

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---------------------------------------------------
IWIPS 2010 - International Workshop on Internationlisation of Products and
Systems
London, England
From Jul 07 to Jul 10 2010

Deadline(s):
15 March 2010: Submission Deadline

More info on http://www.iwips2010.org/

---------------------------------------------------
EuroHaptics 2010
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
From Jul 08 to Jul 10 2010

Deadline(s):
[Date unavailable]: Submission Deadline
22 April 2010: Camera-ready versions ready

More info on http://www.eurohaptics2010.org

---------------------------------------------------
IEEE ICCSIT 2010 - the 3rd IEEE International Conference on Computer Science and
Information Technology
Chengdu, China
From Jul 09 to Jul 11 2010

Deadline(s):
10 March 2010: Submission Deadline

More info on http://www.iccsit.org/

---------------------------------------------------
SOUPS 2010 - Symposium On Usable Privacy and Security
Redmond, WA
From Jul 14 to Jul 16 2010

Deadline(s):
5 March 2010: Technical paper submission deadline

More info on http://cups.cs.cmu.edu/soups/2010/

---------------------------------------------------
Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics (AHFE) International Conference 2010
Miami, Fl, USA
From Jul 17 to Jul 20 2010

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---------------------------------------------------
CT2010 - IADIS International Conference Collaborative Technologies
Freiburg, Germany
From Jul 26 to Jul 28 2010

Deadline(s):
15 March 2010: Submission Deadline

More info on http://www.collaborativetech-conf.org/

---------------------------------------------------
DaVis 2010 - 5th International Symposium Design and Aesthetics in Visualisation
London, England
From Jul 26 to Jul 29 2010

Deadline(s):
1 March 2010: Submission Deadline

More info on http://www.graphicslink.co.uk/IV10/Dvis.htm

---------------------------------------------------
PSH 2010 - Pervasive Systems for Healthcare
Baltimore, USA
From Jul 28 to Jul 30 2010

Deadline(s):
22 March 2010: Submission Deadline
5 April 2010: Acceptance Notification

More info on http://sesar.dti.unimi.it/PSH10/

---------------------------------------------------
Diagrams 2010
Portland, Oregon, USA
From Aug 09 to Aug 11 2010

Deadline(s):
8 January 2010: Abstract submission
18 January 2010: Paper, tutorial and workshop proposal submissions
1 February 2010: Poster submission
29 March 2010: Camera ready copies due

More info on http://www.diagrams-conference.org/2010/

---------------------------------------------------
DIS 2010 - The ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference
Aarhus, Denmark
From Aug 16 to Aug 20 2010

Deadline(s):
15 February 2010: Papers

More info on http://dis2010.org

---------------------------------------------------
UX Australia 2010
Melbourne, Australia
From Aug 25 to Aug 27 2010

Deadline(s):
21 March 2010: Call for proposals deadline
30 June 2010: Early-bird pricing

More info on http://uxaustralia.com.au/conference-2010

---------------------------------------------------
ECCE 2010 - European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics
Delft, The Netherlands
From Aug 25 to Aug 27 2010

Deadline(s):
1 April 2010: Submission deadline

More info on http://ecce2010.eace.net

---------------------------------------------------
ASAI 2010 - XI Argentine Symposium on Artificial Intelligence
Buenos Aires, Argentina
From Aug 30 to Aug 31 2010

Deadline(s):
26 April 2010: Deadline for papers submissions

More info on http://www.exa.unicen.edu.ar/asai2010/

---------------------------------------------------
WI-IAT 2010 - IEEE, WIC, ACM International Conferences on Web Intelligence and
Intelligent Agent Technology
Toronto, Canada
From Aug 31 to Sep 03 2010

Deadline(s):
26 March 2010: Conference Paper Submission Deadline
16 April 2010: Workshop Paper Submission Deadline

More info on http://www.yorku.ca/wiiat10/

---------------------------------------------------
HCI2010 -The 24th BCS International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction
University of Abertay Dundee, UK
From Sep 06 to Sep 10 2010

Deadline(s):
19 March 2010: Conference paper - Submission Deadline
26 March 2010: Workshop and Tutorial Proposal - Submission Deadline

More info on http://www.hci2010.org

---------------------------------------------------
MobileHCI 2010 - 12th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction
with Mobile Devices and Services
Lisboa, Portugal
From Sep 07 to Sep 10 2010

Deadline(s):
19 February 2010: Tutorials
9 April 2010: Posters, Industrial Case Studies, Design Competition, Future
Innovations, Doctoral Consortiums, Panels, Demos and Experiences

More info on http://www.mobilehci2010.org

---------------------------------------------------
FNG2010 - Fun and Games 2010
Leuven, Belgium
From Sep 15 to Sep 17 2010

Deadline(s):
29 January 2010: Submission deadline: workshop proposals
19 March 2010: Submission deadline: FULL and SHORT papers
7 May 2010: Submission deadline: Workshop submissions (for participants)
14 May 2010: Submission deadline: demonstrations
21 May 2010: Submission deadline: Fun n\' Games design competition

More info on http://fng2010.org/

---------------------------------------------------
Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 54th Annual Meeting
San Francisco, California
From Sep 27 to Oct 01 2010

Deadline(s):
19 February 2010: Proposal Submission Deadline

More info on http://www.hfes.org/web/HFESMeetings/2010annualmeeting.html

---------------------------------------------------
RE 2010 - 18th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference
Sydney, Australia
From Sep 27 to Oct 01 2010

Deadline(s):
19 February 2010: Paper Submission Deadline
11 June 2010: Industry Track Extended Abstracts

More info on http://www.re10.org

---------------------------------------------------
UIST10 - 23rd ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology
New York City, USA
From Oct 03 to Oct 06 2010

Deadline(s):
2 April 2010: Tech Notes

More info on http://www.uist2010.org/UIST2010/Home.html

---------------------------------------------------
Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces
Saarbrücken, Germany
From Oct 07 to Oct 10 2010

Deadline(s):
[Date unavailable]: Paper Submission Deadline

More info on http://www.its2010.org/

---------------------------------------------------
NordiCHI 2010 The 6th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction
Reykjavik, Iceland
From Oct 16 to Oct 20 2010

Deadline(s):
12 April 2010: Submission of workshops, tutorials and panel proposals
3 May 2010: Submission of full papers
16 July 2010: Submission of short papers/posters and interactive demos
6 August 2010: Submissions to doctorial consortium

More info on http://www.nordichi2010.org

---------------------------------------------------
NordiCHI 2010
Reykjavik, Iceland
From Oct 16 to Oct 20 2010

Deadline(s):
16 April 2010: Long papers
30 April 2010: Workshops and tutorials
16 July 2010: Short papers
6 August 2010: Doctorial consortium

More info on http://www.nordichi2010.org

---------------------------------------------------
SOFTVIS 2010 - 5th ACM and IEEE Symposium on Software Visualization
Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
From Oct 25 to Oct 26 2010

Deadline(s):
30 April 2010: Paper Submission Deadline

More info on http://www.softvis.org/softvis10/

---------------------------------------------------
ASSETS 2010 - The 12th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and
Accessibility
Orlando, FL
From Oct 25 to Oct 27 2010

Deadline(s):
7 May 2010: Paper submission
2 July 2010: Posters and demos, doctoral consortium, and student research
competition

More info on http://www.sigaccess.org/assets10/

---------------------------------------------------
HCI-Aero 2010 - International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction in
Aerospace 2010
Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA
From Nov 03 to Nov 05 2010

Deadline(s):
2 April 2010: Full Research Papers
30 April 2010: Industry and Early Stage Papers, Posters, Panels, Demos,
Workshops

More info on http://www.ihmc.us/hci-aero2010

---------------------------------------------------
HCI-Aero 2010 - International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction in
Aerospace 2010
Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA
From Nov 03 to Nov 05 2010

Deadline(s):
2 April 2010: Submission Deadline -- Full Research Papers
30 April 2010: Submission Deadline -- Industry, Early-Stage Papers, Posters,
Demos, Workshops, Panels

More info on http://www.ihmc.us/hci-aero2010/hci-aero2010/Home.html

---------------------------------------------------
TwUC 2010
Paris, France
From Nov 08 to Nov 10 2010

Deadline(s):
15 July 2010: Submission Deadline

More info on http://www.twuc.info

---------------------------------------------------
World Usability Day 2010
Everywhere
From Nov 11 to Nov 11 2010

Deadline(s):

More info on http://www.worldusabilityday.org/

---------------------------------------------------
Interntet of Things 2010
Tokyo
From Nov 30 to Dec 01 2010

Deadline(s):
25 March 2010: Submission Deadline

More info on http://www.iot2010.org

---------------------------------------------------
CSCW 2011 - Computer-Supported Cooperative Work
Hangzhou, China
From Mar 19 to Mar 23 2011

Deadline(s):
6 August 2010: Papers and Notes submission deadline
19 November 2010: Videos, Demos, Interactive Papers submission deadline

More info on http://cscw2011.org/

---------------------------------------------------
HCI International 2011 - 14th International Conference on Human-Computer
Interaction
Orlando, Florida, USA
From Jul 09 to Jul 14 2011

Deadline(s):
15 October 2010: Abstract receipt for tutorials
11 February 2011: Abstract receipt for posters

More info on http://www.hcii2011.org/




--

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Interaction-Design.org

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-

HI I saw your post:

And I know your pain.

I have written several articles on my blog about agile and ux -
uidesignguide.com.

I think you have to look at this at a different approach.I've worked in the same
situation and even situations where waterfall method is primarily used.
Ultimately, you have to have people that can multi-task and are empowered to
attend the meetings as YOU as a UX team need them and decline those that are not
required for the UX to attend,

Are your scrums running too long?
a scrum should be no more than 15 minutes a day. Even with 3 people and 1 person
attending 4 - 5 design meetings. That's not too bad to manage time wise. [ I've
worked on 4 upwards of 6 projects at once doing UX solo for many years.]

What this means is you need to adapt your practices as a UX professional. Use
rapid prototyping [ wire frames, paper, ] to rapidly illustrate designs,
interactions, and workflows. Use interactive PDF's or quick prototyping tools,
axure, balsamiq, flex builder, etc... You can accomplish quite a lot this way,
before a sprint or iteration even begins. Also you don't feel put out if
something is prioritized lower or thrown out entirely. You can start lift some
of the team burden.

You could also take a look and, I talk about this at my web site, At having your
team control different stages of the cycle on different projects. For example 1
team member works in the future [ 2 weeks ahead of core development] and works
on rough drafts, paper designs, light wire frames for upcoming stories.

Another team member can work on quality assurance or the "future" of the
product, after design / coding / ux have come together to produce a "done" state
product.

And another can live in the present - taking the day to day activities scrums,
etc, and relaying them to the team, working on the implementation of the design
across the various projects and setting up meetings to inform other UX team
members what should be done, or what needs to be accomplished and start setting
timelines within your functional group.

A lot of this will depend on the makeup of your team, but it can be done and
there are going to be stressful times, but that is true with any work.

So how can you go about doing this.

1. In your next retrospective take a look at your existing successes, and
problems for the UX team and truly get into what is causing them.

Is it the process, lack of resources, lack of time, lack of product owner
support, flaky stories,

2. Next take a look at how these is helping / hurting the team.
In some cases scrums may be lasting 40 minutes, when breakout meetings should be
held. I know I don't necessarily hang around for database / data structuring
meetings.

3. Take a look at and determine are you finishing your sprints/iterations? If so
at what cost to the teams? Do things feel rushed? Are you completing a "done"
state a the very end of your cycle so rushed to move to next?

Is your teams design time factored in if you are using task planning? Are you
forced to do a process to satisfy a group? If you are then there is a big issue.

4. Does it seem like stories are not freezing or being time boxed correctly? Are
you preparing a little bit ahead and reading stories that are upcoming? Are you
preparing too much ahead and having to toss stuff. - This can really help to
identify problems from a technical / design hurdle up front, but just enough and
that is what you need to figure out.

5. Is the product being delivered or is it suffering in some way? does it feel
like the groups definition of "done" is too rigid / not rigid enough?

6. Has the development team made it easy for the UX group to adapt to the
program code for your implementors.

7. Are your iterations / sprints too short?

Theses are just a few questions I would really take a look at to start. Just
like the agile process for development you need to refine the core process for
each team. Other wise the stress levels go way up and the product owners become
unhappy not too mention the team.

Solve dysfunctions in the process, product, and keep doing your retrospective. A
lot of times these just drop off to the wayside and they are really needed to
help you reach the next level of greatness.

Preston M

http://www.uidesignguide.com
http://www.uidesignguide.com/2009/10/20/ui-design-lessons-a-ui-designer-in-an-ag\
ile-world-get-me-out-of-hell-part-1/

--- In agile-usability@yahoogroups.com, "j_cabinaw" <julie@...> wrote:
>
> Would love to hear from some of you on this issue – I manage a UX team that is
in an agile driven organization, has been for 2-3 years now.  As the demand for
UX services from my team rises (a good thing!) our ability to be spread across
multiple agile project teams is wearing the team out and making them feel like a
casualty of agile and processes that leave us out because there is not enough of
us to go around. (a bad thing!)  We are only one deep in interaction design and
visual design (in the process of trying to find a new person with visual and
intearctive design competencies...but still quite thinly resourced.)
>
> At any given time, there may be 4-5 agile projects underway (or more) and my
team members have to participate in scrums for all these teams, meetings for all
these teams, and still manage to do the work.  Its a major burnout factor.  In
addition, it is hard to maintain a higher level organizational visibility of the
capacity of my team to ensure we prioritize their time to the most important
projects.  I spend a tone of time managing this via Microsoft TFS to keep a
higher level visibility of this.
>
> In any case, would love to hear if anyone else has been there, done that and
how you solved this conundrum?
>

Sent from my DeLorean at 88MPH

Julie,

You've already received some excellent advice, but I'd like to focus on
one small bit.

j_cabinaw wrote:
> At any given time, there may be 4-5 agile projects underway (or more)
> and my team members have to participate in scrums for all these
> teams, meetings for all these teams, and still manage to do the work.

Are your team members receiving value from all of these meetings?  Are
they providing value for all of these meetings?

It could be that they only need to attend some of them.  It also could
be that there are too many meetings, or they're not well focused.  Or
any of a number of other problems that meetings often have.

I suggest that having a retrospective with your team members might turn
up some insights and possibly some actions you can take.

   - George

--
   ----------------------------------------------------------------------
    * George Dinwiddie *                      http://blog.gdinwiddie.com
    Software Development                    http://www.idiacomputing.com
    Consultant and Coach                    http://www.agilemaryland.org
   ----------------------------------------------------------------------

On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 7:54 AM, <whyjg@...> wrote:
> Other than mitigating burn out (which is a serious concern for my team)
> how does spreading the team over so many projects (an issue I also face)
> affect quality of work?

It kills quality, but you're able to help the organization release a
product that's not as bad as what would go out without UX there. Faint
praise, but if that gets you by...

You can avoid the total mediocrity by taking all the typical advice:

1. Do everything you can to boost the organization's design literacy.
The better the org is, the less bad the non-UXd product will be,
spreading you less thin over time.

2. Find allies. Some engineers and product managers have better UX
skills than others, or are more amenable to your advice. These are
people you can spend less time with and still achieve the same results
you achieve with more effort elsewhere.

3. Cherry pick projects. Find projects where you can have a really
good impact, hit these projects out of the park. This requires before
and after measurement of some sort (even if they're just ad hoc
heuristics). It also requires closer than normal work with the team
(to ensure implementation matches design). And when these projects are
successes, mention it at every single meeting for a fucking year.

One whole year.

(And when they fail, examine why, fix it, and pick the next project.)



--
Austin Govella
User Experience

Work: http://www.grafofini.com
Blog: http://www.thinkingandmaking.com
Book: http://www.blueprintsfortheweb.com

austin@...
215-240-1265

Good point

Quality is only going to be as good as long as your ux team can handle the load.
Some times the best you can do in real situations like corporate environments is
guide the team. It's not going to fully get you the best product and that's sad
but true.

A lot of times start-ups are where you will get a lot of the best products
because the product owner can control the product and vision so close.

Your product is only going to be as good as your weakest link. Whether that be
time, money, resources, etc..

When I look at the UX process as a whole in relation to agile you have to be
flexible and take a look at what is reality. We all want the greatest products
and the greatest experience. Especially true if you are a interaction designer,
but it just doesn't always happen.

That is the nature of the beast. Agile for ux is about rapid design, but you can
also figure ways to implement rapid usability testing,

Keep in mind the state of "done" could just mean done for this iteration, in all
hopes you will refine that piece of application and have time to refine the
design. Does it happen? Not as often as I would like to see.

All I can provide is tips that I know work, I use them. I practice them and most
important I adjust theme.

As the cycle becomes more rapid, quality can suffer, but then when it does you
have to figure out how can you fix it? How can you do this as a team? Sometimes
you might have to rely on your other team members to take on roles. That is when
you have to be prepared to give expert guidance.



--- In agile-usability@yahoogroups.com, whyjg@... wrote:
>
> Other than mitigating burn out (which is a serious concern for my team) how
does spreading the team over so many projects (an issue I also face) affect
quality of work?
>
> Looking at Preston's suggestions leads me to believe that the end deliverable
from UX can vary based on time and tool used BUT how does that account for the
quality of the experiences being created?
>
> One of our current challenges is ensuring we create engaging, desirable and
usable experiences yet the all-out speed of 2-week iterations generally leaves
much of that deeper thinking by the wayside. Along the way we collect UX "debt"
but in reality we rarely go back and pay down much of that debt.
>
> I've actually instructed my team to refuse a full iteration's worth of work if
they can't commit to a quality bar by iteration's end. While solid in theory (in
my opinion) it ends up making UX look "lazy" or not "team players". In addition
it puts us in a situation where there isn't enough "ready" for the dev team to
fill up available points.
>
> So....burn out and quality -- two risks of spreading the team thin. Any
thoughts on mitigating?
>
>
> Thanks.
>
> [Jeff]
> Sent from my DeLorean at 88MPH
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: "Preston" <imaginethepoet@...>
> Date: Fri, 05 Mar 2010 12:56:55
> To: <agile-usability@yahoogroups.com>
> Subject: [agile-usability] Re: Spread too thin??
>
> HI I saw your post:
>
> And I know your pain.
>
> I have written several articles on my blog about agile and ux -
uidesignguide.com.
>
> I think you have to look at this at a different approach.I've worked in the
same situation and even situations where waterfall method is primarily used.
Ultimately, you have to have people that can multi-task and are empowered to
attend the meetings as YOU as a UX team need them and decline those that are not
required for the UX to attend,
>
> Are your scrums running too long?
> a scrum should be no more than 15 minutes a day. Even with 3 people and 1
person attending 4 - 5 design meetings. That's not too bad to manage time wise.
[ I've worked on 4 upwards of 6 projects at once doing UX solo for many years.]
>
> What this means is you need to adapt your practices as a UX professional. Use
rapid prototyping [ wire frames, paper, ] to rapidly illustrate designs,
interactions, and workflows. Use interactive PDF's or quick prototyping tools,
axure, balsamiq, flex builder, etc... You can accomplish quite a lot this way,
before a sprint or iteration even begins. Also you don't feel put out if
something is prioritized lower or thrown out entirely. You can start lift some
of the team burden.
>
> You could also take a look and, I talk about this at my web site, At having
your team control different stages of the cycle on different projects. For
example 1 team member works in the future [ 2 weeks ahead of core development]
and works on rough drafts, paper designs, light wire frames for upcoming
stories.
>
> Another team member can work on quality assurance or the "future" of the
product, after design / coding / ux have come together to produce a "done" state
product.
>
> And another can live in the present - taking the day to day activities scrums,
etc, and relaying them to the team, working on the implementation of the design
across the various projects and setting up meetings to inform other UX team
members what should be done, or what needs to be accomplished and start setting
timelines within your functional group.
>
> A lot of this will depend on the makeup of your team, but it can be done and
there are going to be stressful times, but that is true with any work.
>
> So how can you go about doing this.
>
> 1. In your next retrospective take a look at your existing successes, and
problems for the UX team and truly get into what is causing them.
>
> Is it the process, lack of resources, lack of time, lack of product owner
support, flaky stories,
>
> 2. Next take a look at how these is helping / hurting the team.
> In some cases scrums may be lasting 40 minutes, when breakout meetings should
be held. I know I don't necessarily hang around for database / data structuring
meetings.
>
> 3. Take a look at and determine are you finishing your sprints/iterations? If
so at what cost to the teams? Do things feel rushed? Are you completing a "done"
state a the very end of your cycle so rushed to move to next?
>
> Is your teams design time factored in if you are using task planning? Are you
forced to do a process to satisfy a group? If you are then there is a big issue.
>
> 4. Does it seem like stories are not freezing or being time boxed correctly?
Are you preparing a little bit ahead and reading stories that are upcoming? Are
you preparing too much ahead and having to toss stuff. - This can really help to
identify problems from a technical / design hurdle up front, but just enough and
that is what you need to figure out.
>
> 5. Is the product being delivered or is it suffering in some way? does it feel
like the groups definition of "done" is too rigid / not rigid enough?
>
> 6. Has the development team made it easy for the UX group to adapt to the
program code for your implementors.
>
> 7. Are your iterations / sprints too short?
>
> Theses are just a few questions I would really take a look at to start. Just
like the agile process for development you need to refine the core process for
each team. Other wise the stress levels go way up and the product owners become
unhappy not too mention the team.
>
> Solve dysfunctions in the process, product, and keep doing your retrospective.
A lot of times these just drop off to the wayside and they are really needed to
help you reach the next level of greatness.
>
> Preston M
>
> http://www.uidesignguide.com
>
http://www.uidesignguide.com/2009/10/20/ui-design-lessons-a-ui-designer-in-an-ag\
ile-world-get-me-out-of-hell-part-1/
>
> --- In agile-usability@yahoogroups.com, "j_cabinaw" <julie@> wrote:
> >
> > Would love to hear from some of you on this issue – I manage a UX team that
is in an agile driven organization, has been for 2-3 years now.  As the demand
for UX services from my team rises (a good thing!) our ability to be spread
across multiple agile project teams is wearing the team out and making them feel
like a casualty of agile and processes that leave us out because there is not
enough of us to go around. (a bad thing!)  We are only one deep in interaction
design and visual design (in the process of trying to find a new person with
visual and intearctive design competencies...but still quite thinly resourced.)
> >
> > At any given time, there may be 4-5 agile projects underway (or more) and my
team members have to participate in scrums for all these teams, meetings for all
these teams, and still manage to do the work.  Its a major burnout factor.  In
addition, it is hard to maintain a higher level organizational visibility of the
capacity of my team to ensure we prioritize their time to the most important
projects.  I spend a tone of time managing this via Microsoft TFS to keep a
higher level visibility of this.
> >
> > In any case, would love to hear if anyone else has been there, done that and
how you solved this conundrum?
> >
>

 

Quality is only going to be as good as long as your ux team can handle the load. Some times the best you can do in real situations like corporate environments is guide the team. It's not going to fully get you the best product and that's sad but true.

(responding to Julie)

> In any case, would love to hear if anyone else has been there,
> done that and how you solved this conundrum?

We solved a similar but more severe problem - one person had
3 times the amount of work he could cope with, across several
teams.

What we did: This one person did not do ANY of the work; all the
work was done by (in our case) 6 other people.  This one expert
visited all the others in a more or less "round-robin" fashion,
advising, showing them how, keeping them on track, explaining
and correcting mistakes.

This approach worked really well for us; we never had a crisis of
skills shortage in that area again.

Paul Oldfield
Capgemini

Paul,

The vast percentage of our "triage" efforts for project and programs, from
large defense to agile development start with building a RAM (Responsibility
Assignment Matrix) - "who is doing what." Next is the assessment for
"capacity for work," - how much time does each person in the RAM have to
produce value for the project.

With this Big Visible Chart hanging on the wall, the majority of the issues
you talk about are no visible and their corrections actionable.

Glen Alleman

-----Original Message-----
From: agile-usability@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:agile-usability@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of pauloldfield1
Sent: Monday, March 08, 2010 3:51 AM
To: agile-usability@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [agile-usability] Re: Spread too thin??

(responding to Julie)

> In any case, would love to hear if anyone else has been there,
> done that and how you solved this conundrum?

We solved a similar but more severe problem - one person had
3 times the amount of work he could cope with, across several
teams.

What we did: This one person did not do ANY of the work; all the
work was done by (in our case) 6 other people.  This one expert
visited all the others in a more or less "round-robin" fashion,
advising, showing them how, keeping them on track, explaining
and correcting mistakes.

This approach worked really well for us; we never had a crisis of
skills shortage in that area again.

Paul Oldfield
Capgemini




------------------------------------

Yahoo! Groups Links

Hello friends,

My friend Luke Hohmann is sponsoring a great workshop in New York April 6-7. I
am a huge fan of Innovation Games and consider them an essential part of my
Agile/UX toolkit. I've written a few articles about these techniques for the
Cooper Journal. Check it out here if you're curious about it.
http://www.cooper.com/journal/lane_halley/

More information and registration http://innovationgamesnyny.eventbrite.com/

You can use the code "Friends_of_Lane" for $100 off registration.

Details below…

---
Innovation Games®:
Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play:
A two-day interactive class based on the material found in the book of the same
name. Used by corporations such as SAP, Intuit, Qualcomm, Emerson Climate
Technologies, Wyse Technologies and AirTransportIT, Innovation Games® have been
featured in Software Development magazine and Soft*Letter, numerous blogs and
conferences.
Description
Modern product development practices, especially those that focus on innovative
products and services, place great emphasis on having development teams work
directly with customers. This is good news, for the foundation of innovation is
a genuine understanding of your customers, and then using this understanding to
create more effective ways of solving their problems.

This course tackles the challenge of developing customer understanding head on
by providing you with a fresh perspective on how to use a variety of games with
your customers to develop the understanding that forms the foundation of
innovation. You'll find that if you use them, you'll come to understand what
your customers really want. You'll have fun doing it. Perhaps more importantly,
they'll have fun doing it. Armed with this understanding, you'll be able to
create the breakthrough, innovative products that are the foundation of lasting
success.
This course covers in-person and online games and includes sections on
facilitation and presentation skills, how to structure engagements, and how to
manage clients.
 

  Target Audience
Product managers, marketing managers, software engineers, market research
professionals.
Registration and more information

Thanks!

Lane Halley
User Experience
Liquidnet