Welcome to Agile - you get put on a team as a designer and you feel like you’re just trying to keep your head above the water. How do you fit in? How do you keep pace with the team without feeling like you’re feeding an insatiable beast? How do you get your team to understand what you do? In this talk, you’ll learn how to keep your sanity with some “from the trenches” tips & tricks like: using dual-track backlogs, setting up Kanban for Design, creating discovery and strategy tracks, finding the power in cross-functional pairing, using a Balanced Team approach, and honing collaboration and communication techniques that fold you into the team. Whether you're a UXer or a team looking to help support your teammates, come learn how to keep UX working in harmony with Agile development so the entire team can deliver great product.

1. @ncapuana@ncapuana
UX survival
guide
by Nicole Capuana

2. @ncapuana
Once upon a time
in a kingdom of robots....

3. @ncapuana
Hello!
● Director of User Experience at LeanDog
● Founding member of HER Ideas in Motion, a
non-profit teaching girls how to code,
design games, & build robots
● Organizer of Cleveland Lean Startup Circle
● Over 15 years in UX covering the whole
spectrum - HTML/CSS. interaction design,
visual design, information architecture, user
research, usability & content strategy

4. @ncapuana
Saint Possum
● Agile maximizing value,
maximizing feedback, and
embracing change.
● Lean minimizing waste,
validating or invalidating
assumptions, learning and
adapting to deliver value
incrementally.
● UX everything your users
experience

5. @ncapuana
UX is part of the team
● Team member
● More than wireframes or mockups
● From beginning to end
● Stories, chores, and refactoring just
like development
If you don’t have UX on the team,
you need to get them
Lesson 1
● Dedicated
ideal
● 2 projects
max

6. @ncapuana
strategy & vision before development
● Allows exploration,
experimentation
● View of the whole
● Supports business
case & telling story
● Defines scope
● UX led, design
spikes
● Good, Better, Best
mentality
Lesson 2

7. @ncapuana
Make UX Work Visible
● Represent UX work in release
plan & backlog
● Design spikes, chores, & cards
● Estimation is on par with Dev
● Put your work up on the wall
● Share your work with tools like
InvisionApp and Zeplin
Lesson 3

8. @ncapuana
Pair on Everything
● Cross-functional powers
● Shared understanding
● Cross-pollination
● You do better work, faster
● Promotes a whole team
mindset
Lesson 4

9. @ncapuana
Be a Balanced Team
● High
collaboration
● Skills not roles
● Assess
desirability,
feasibility &
usability
together
Lesson 5
● Find better ways
to work
● Make a happy team

10. @ncapuana
Find Your Balance
● Let ego go
● Let it go
● Small, imperfect, but
deliverable (varying
levels of fidelity)
● Expand your skills
(test, write stories)
Lesson 6
● May feel
uncomfortable at first
● There’s always more
to do

11. @ncapuana
Test Early & Often
● Test the riskiest, the
most valuable
● Build on the best
practices so you don’t
have to test everything
● Embrace Test-Driven
Design
● Make data informed
decisions
● 10x, 100x, 1000x
Lesson 7
● Get it in your user's’ hands ASAP
● Design incrementally in thin slices

12. @ncapuana
There Will Be DeBt
● Issues will be found once
you start implementing or
building
● Connecting towards the
whole can reveal spots that
no longer work well
Lesson 8
● Help team prioritize the
most valuable or severe
first

13. @ncapuana
Don’t Fall into TRaps● No UX
● Playing
catch-up
● Working in
silos or alone
● Mockup every
screen in
Photoshop
● No time for users
● Accepting status-quo
● Not embracing change
● Non designers
designing
● “I just know what
they want”

14. @ncapuana
You Can Do It
● Don’t look back
● Make do with what you
got and take a step to
change

15. @ncapuana
You asked - additional readings
Books
● Don’t Make Me Think AND Rocket Surgery Made Easy, Steve Krug
● The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web and Beyond, Jesse James Garrett
● Universal Methods of Design: 100 Ways to Research Complex Problems, Develop Innovative Ideas, and Design Effective
Solutions Bella Martin, Bruce M. Hanington
● Agile Experience Design: A Digital Designer's Guide to Agile, Lean, and Continuous Lindsay Ratcliffe, Marc McNeill
● Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience Jeff Gothelf, Josh Seiden
A fantastic and comprehensive list - The Only UX Reading List
Design Studio Method
● Todd Zaki Warfel (video)
● Design Studio: A Method for Concepting,
● Critique & Iteration
● Speed Design Studio -
● Design Studio for context-aware products
● Introduction to Design Studio Methodology
● Design of Design Studio
● Design Studio and Agile UX Process and Pitfalls