Experiences integrating sophisticated user experience design practices into agile processes

The purpose of this study is to discuss approaches for developing human–computer interaction (HCI) in educational technology (ET) based on definitions of visual design, learning variables and user-interface design principles in the field of instructional design and technology (IDT). We will do in several stages, first, we will review historical definitions of HCI and its developments in education and considerations for defining visual literacy for learning with instructional design (ID) models. Then, we will review each definition of visual principles for user interface design (UID) or user experience design (UED) and learning from screens. HCI and its roles with the perceptional approach will be discussed as previous definitions in the type of theories such as cognitive load, activity and paying particular attention to primary concepts included in each definition based on the ID model approach. We will also present some of the historical criticisms of the definitions, which provided designing and developing user interfaces. The process should indicate or address possible performance design approaches in ID steps for developing learning and teaching in learning environments as well as developing UID or UED in ET. This also indicates approaches in philosophy of ET and its theory, definition and applications of new technologies as well as UID or UED perspectives and visual design variables. In this study, we review the visual design techniques from past to present that multimedia project design teams should follow the strategies and rules for designing learning environments in industry, business and military based on philosophy of ET and HCI design with ID models by using the newest technologies. The process compares both understanding global UID or UED requirements and visual strategies and considerations for research and product design by ID models. The steps include recognising terminology in ET practice concept, psychological, technological and pedagogical foundations in ID as well as ET approaches and using visual rules for conducting multimedia projects in last decays. At the end of the study, conceptions of ET, ID models and HCI will be discussing to indicate design standards for multimedia projects in the field of IDT. We will also present the relationships between ET and designing problems for creating instructional materials in education. All steps in visual design, UID, UED and HCI design based on philosophical approaches and evaluations in the field are given at the end of the study. Keywords: User interface design, visual designs, human–computer interaction (HCI), user experience design, educational technology, IDT

An alternative solution for Indosport, considering the increasingly advanced smartphone development and also followed by the rapid growth of its users in Indonesia. The purpose of this study project is to produce a product in the form of a user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) design in helping to realize targeted mobile applications and not forgetting to apply the principles of visual communication design namely unity and variety, hierarchy, contrast, proportion and balance. The UI and UX design methods go through several stages of work in sequence: pre-production process, production process, and post-production. This design results in UI and UX designs that are equipped with user flow, interface designs, illustrations and prototypes. The main page of the Indosport mobile application is News, Activity, Calendar, and Profile which later on these pages there are several features that are different from the previous page. The making of this UI uses several visual languages such as medium close up, full shot, long shot, close up and medium long shot in the image section contained in the article as well as the depiction of field styles used to almost all visual UI elements. Using several principles in design, namely time to learn, speed of performance, rate of errors by users, retention over time, and subjective satisfaction. The resulting design forms will be distributed directly to the Research and Development division and the IT division from Indosport to be made a native.

The effectiveness of user experience design is dependent on many factors including complete and accurate contextual information, design approaches, and methods followed. The recent HCI literature clearly shows that there is a growing research interest on integration of User Experience (UX) design and agile software development. A framework based on design thinking is proposed that enhances the current user experience design by integration of three design approaches - design thinking, designing for user experience and agile software development. These three different design approaches of the framework complement each other to benefit effective derivation of contextual requirements that include functionality of the system as well as aspects of total user experience based on the shared understanding gained from stakeholders in the context. Implications of each design approach on stakeholders and the context are discussed in detail to show the significance and value of the proposed framework on the whole design and design process. It is expected that the proposed framework is capable of enhancing the design quality and user experience of products, systems, and services created through agile software development approaches.Keywordsuser experienceagile software developmenthuman-centered designhuman-computer interactiondesign thinking

How can user experience design (UED) practices be leveraged in agile development to improve product usability? UED practices identify the needs and goals of the user through user research and testing. By incorporating UED in agile development, user research and testing can be utilized to prioritize features in the product backlog and to iteratively refine designs to achieve better usability. Furthermore, integrating UED and Agile processes can be accomplished with little or no impact on release schedules. The cases studies presented in this paper describe two examples of UED and agile integration at VeriSign.

An optical brain-machine interface (O-BMI) system using calcium imaging has various advantages such as high resolution, a comprehensive view of large neural populations, abilities such as long-term stable recording, and applicability to freely behaving animals in neuroscience research. The present study developed an ergonomic user interface (UI) design, based on a use scenario for an O-BMI system that can be used for the acquisition and processing of calcium imaging in freely behaving rodents. The UI design was developed in three steps: (1) identification of design and function requirements of users, (2) establishment of a use scenario, and (3) development of a UI prototype. The UI design requirements were identified by a literature review, a benchmark of existing systems, and a focus group interview with five neuroscience researchers. Then, the use scenario was developed for tasks of data acquisition, feature extraction, and neural decoding for offline and online processing by considering the sequences of operations and needs of users. Lastly, a digital prototype incorporating an information architecture, graphic user interfaces, and simulated functions was fabricated. A usability test was conducted with five neuroscientists (work experience = 3.4 ± 1.1 years) and five ergonomic experts (work experience = 3.6 ± 2.7 years) to compare the digital prototypes with four existing systems (Miniscope, nVista, Mosaic, and Suite2p). The usability testing results showed that the ergonomic UI design was significantly preferred to the UI designs of the existing systems by reducing the task completion time by 10.1% to 70.2% on average, the scan path length by 14.4% to 88.7%, and perceived workload by 12.2% to 37.9%, increasing satisfaction by 11.3% to 74.3% in data acquisition and signal-extraction tasks. The present study demonstrates the significance of the user-centered design approach in the development of a system for neuroscience research. Further research is needed to validate the usability test results of the UI prototype as a corresponding real system is implemented.

Traditional screen-based interfaces are evolving into a new era due to rapid technological advancements and shifting user needs. At the core of this evolution lies Anderson's 1989 vision of computer technology becoming transparent and invisible to the user. Similarly, in the mid-1990s, Weiser laid the foundation for this transformation by arguing that the fundamentals of human-computer interaction should be reconsidered. He proposed that a “disappearing” or “invisible” form of computing offers a more natural and manageable mode of interaction between humans and machines. In the 2000s, Rosalind W. Picard contributed to this discourse by asserting that, if computers are to engage in natural interactions with humans, they must be equipped with the ability to recognize, understand, and even express emotions. She advocated for computers that not only respond to user commands but also proactively act based on the user’s emotional and physiological states. These perspectives collectively form the foundation of the concept of Screenless Interfaces. With the proliferation of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the advancement of human-machine interaction, user experiences that do not require screens are gaining prominence. Screenless Interfaces engage users through alternative sensory inputs such as voice, touch, motion, and other perceptual modes. These interactions provide users with natural, responsive, and personalized experiences, opening new possibilities in the field of User Experience (UX) Design and fostering direct relationships between users and systems. The aim of this study is to define the concept of Screenless Interfaces, which has become increasingly integrated into contemporary life, and to examine their impact on User Experience Design. To this end, a literature review is conducted to analyze the recent history of Screenless Interfaces and to explore their relationship with UX. Additionally, through the analysis of films and television series, the study discusses the innovative contributions and potential interface designs that Screenless Interfaces may offer to future interaction products. By presenting its findings, the study seeks to shed light on the concept and future of Screenless Interfaces, and to articulate their connection with User Experience Design.

Despite of many criticisms, agile software development (Beck et al., Manifesto for Agile Software Development, http://agilemanifesto.org, [1]) philosophy has been proved to be quite successful to increase the project success rate up to a significant extent. The primary reasons behind the criticism of agile are the strong violation of the traditional disciplined software engineering theories, principles and practices. The goal of this research paper is to establish the fact that agility may also be achieved by following traditional process models especially with BRIDGE (Mandal, 2009 IEEE International Advance Computing Conference (IACC 2009) Patiala, India, [2]) process model. Hence, the aim of this paper is to integrate the agile and traditional disciplined software development process models and establish the compatibility between both the approaches. At the beginning, we have explored the objectives and principles of agile software development. Next, we briefly discussed the BRIDGE process model and further justified that--following BRIDGE process model, the philosophy of agile may also be achieved and conclude that BRIDGE model has both the capability of traditional software development process model as well as of the agile process.

This research aims to create a User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) design so that people become easier to buy food at Culinary UMKMs using the Design Thinking method which has several stages, namely the Emphatize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Testing stages. The Design Thinking method is used to create solutions to solve problems felt by users. In conducting testing, the study used Usability Testing and tested 10 respondents who would provide an assessment through testing using the Single Ease Question which has a test result of 6.7 out of 7, and testing using the System Usability Scale which has a test result of 93 out of 100, which can be concluded that the UI / UX design of mobile-based food sales applications for MSMEs in the city of Manado can be used properly by respondents, and can provide solutions to existing problems.

In 2023, digital literacy has increased to be discussed which navigates human interaction with the current digital environment. The purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between digital literacy and user interface (UI) design quality using a usability testing approach. The study involved collecting data through a series of trials with participants representing different levels of digital literacy. The main focus of this study was to assess the extent to which the UI design could improve the digital literacy understanding of the users, namely school children. The parameters evaluated involved aspects of digital literacy, such as the ability to understand and evaluate digital information, as well as usability elements such as interface clarity, navigation efficiency, and user engagement level. The approach used is the design thinking method which focuses on the end result only. Usability testing is an important evaluation method in measuring the effectiveness, efficiency, and user satisfaction of a user interface (UI). This research focuses on the use of usability testing to assess the quality of UI design in the context of understanding digital literacy. The results of this study can provide insight into how the level of digital literacy can affect the user experience in using digital applications and contribute to the development of UIs that are more user-friendly and accessible to various levels of society.

In recent years, the design of user interfaces and user experience has become more relevant in companies due to the need to optimize the interaction between users and complex interactive systems. This study aims to establish design guidelines to improve the user experience in engineering applications in teams of Air handling unit testing engineers. A redesign process of a handling unit testing application was conducted using a user-centered design approach through in-depth interviews, user profiling, interactive prototyping, and usability testing. The results obtained showed a significant improvement in usability and user experience by implementing the fundamentals and principles of user-centered design. This case study highlighted the fundamental role of user interface and user experience design so that user interface designers and engineers can reference the learnings and findings to improve their applications to optimize the tasks of handling unit testing engineers.

Nowadays, e-commerce websites have become part of people’s daily lives; therefore, it has become necessary to seek help in assessing and improving the usability of the services of e-commerce websites. Essentially, usability studies offer significant information about users’ assessment and perceptions of satisfaction, effectiveness, and efficiency of online services. This research investigated the usability of two e-commerce web-sites in Saudi Arabia and compared the effectiveness of different behavioral measurement techniques, such as heuristic evaluation, usability testing, and eye-tracking. In particular, this research selected the Extra and Jarir e-commerce websites in Saudi Arabia based on a combined approach of criteria and ranking. This research followed an experimental approach in which both qualitative and quantitative approaches were employed to collect and analyze the data. Each of the behavioral measurement techniques identified usability issues ranging from cosmetic to catastrophic issues. It is worth mentioning that the heuristic evaluation by experts provided both the majority of the issues and identified the most severe usability issues compared to the number of issues identified by both usability testing and eye-tracking combined. Usability testing provided fewer problems, most of which had already been identified by the experts. Eye-tracking provided critical information regarding the page design and element placements and revealed certain user behavior patterns that indicated certain usability problems. Overall, the research findings appeared useful to user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) designers to consider the provided recommendations to enhance the usability of e-commerce websites.

In order to achieve information visualization, realize good interaction between users and information, and meet the needs of users, this study first studied the interaction behavior of the user when using the smartphone was studied, and analyzed the visual factors of the smartphone interface were analyzed from the user sensory interaction level, and the user operation mode level, from the expression of visual form to the commonly used interface mode and User Interface (UI) component space. On this basis, the situational visual expression of the scene in different interaction scenarios was analyzed. Secondly, the basic theory of visual design of smartphone application interface was explained from the perspectives of aesthetics, semiotics and Gestalt psychology, In other words, the visual design of the application interface should be metaphorical, highlighting the key points in the overall visual style, and conforming to the user’s psychological model. At the same time, in order to meet the user’s personalized needs for control, it must add customized options. Finally, the model of the interface visual design method of the interdisciplinary “Shared Communication” system for the interface design of the mobile APP was constructed, and the case of Didi Chuxing was analyzed, which preliminarily confirmed the feasibility of the construction of the interface visual design method model of the “Shared Communication” system.

Effort estimation is an important practice in agile software development. The agile community believes that developers’ estimates get more accurate over time due to the cumulative effect of learning from short and frequent feedback. However, there is no empirical evidence of an improvement in estimation accuracy over time, nor have prior studies examined effort estimation in different development activities, which are associated with substantial costs. This study fills the knowledge gap in the field of software estimation in agile software development by investigating estimations across time and different development activities based on data collected from a large agile project. This study investigated effort estimation in various development activities, including feature development, bug fixing, and refactoring in agile software development. The results indicate that estimation of agile development does not improve over time, as claimed in the literature. Our data also indicate that no difference exists in the magnitude of estimation errors between feature tasks and bug-fixing/refactoring tasks, while bug-fixing and refactoring tasks are overestimated more frequently than feature tasks. This study also contributes to our knowledge about overestimation and underestimation patterns in agile software development.

The lack of user engagement, the absence of user feedback, incomplete and continuously changing user requirements are among the critical concerns that cause projects to fail. User-centered design (UCD) and agile software development are two iterative approaches that have been proposed to overcome such concerns. UCD is a design process focusing on user research, user interface design and usability evaluation. Introduced by software engineering practitioners, agile refers to a number of iterative and incremental software development practices that emphasize people’s needs, communication between developers and stakeholders and the ability to adapt to change. In both the agile and UCD communities, however, a full understanding of user requirements is often seen as incompatible with early and quick development iterations. We performed a literature review aiming to identify how agile teams have integrated UCD tools into their agile software development process to a better understanding of the user requirements without losing sight of the agile values and principles. UCD tools adaptations and minimal-up-front design applied in agile development are among the approaches discovered in this study. The findings could lead to a comprehensive user-centric software engineering that will overcome inherent problems faced by agile teams to understand user needs, priorities and goals.

Agile development processes such as Scrum have been successfully applied in the software industry for many years. Based on experience, industrial practitioners indicate three predominant benefits of agile development processes compared to traditional software development processes. First of all, development results better fit customers’ and other stakeholders’ needs. That is because they are intensively involved in the development process by receiving, applying and assessing functional software increments in a defined cadence throughout the development process. Secondly, agile development processes better cope with unexpected changes in the development process due to the built-in process flexibility. Lastly, development speed has significantly increased in most of the agile software development projects, resulting in a shorter time-to-market. Especially in the context of radical innovations for technical systems, manufacturing companies are striving for approaches to optimize their development processes in a similar direction. Traditional plan-oriented development approaches such as VDI 2221 or Cooper’s Stage-Gate Process turn out to be insufficiently customer oriented, too inflexible and project duration is usually too long to reach an adequate time-to-market. For that reason, a large community in academia and industrial practice is developing and implementing approaches to adapt agile software development practices for the development of technical systems. However, a current study in industrial practice reveals that out of 23 objectives, that are expected when introducing agile development processes to technical systems, the three objectives mentioned above, show the largest negative deviations from expected benefit to realized benefit. Therefore, the overall goal of this research is to address these gaps by developing an explicit methodological approach for an agile development of technical systems. It turns out, that mainly the role of prototyping and the way product specifications are handled during the development process change significantly in the course of introducing agility to development of technical systems. Agile practitioners strive to not necessarily define product specifications comprehensively upfront, as it is postulated in plan-oriented development processes. In contrast, product specifications, which are of major importance to the overall development project, are specified and validated with customers and other stakeholders in early prototypes. Therefore, prototypes are realized in a defined cadence throughout the development process to gradually specify and validate the product. However, the way product specifications are prioritized and selected in the development of technical systems has to differ substantially from the general way Scrum or other existing agile development processes propose. That is because technical systems are characterized by multiple technical interrelations, resulting in informational dependencies for the development process. For that reason, a prioritization along criteria such as customer value, development effort and risk seems too narrow in the context of technical systems. In fact, the prioritization of product specifications has to consider both, the value being generated by their realization as well as the informational dependencies towards other specifications. Furthermore, when designing a prototype, time constraints need to be particularly considered due to lead times in parts delivery and prototype production. Therefore, this paper introduces a methodology to prioritize and select technical design parameters in agile development processes. The methodology can be applied in the cyclical sprint planning that aims at defining the scope of the next prototype to be developed. As outlined above, the major paradigms of value generation, informational dependencies as well as lead-time and effort are crucial when adapting agile for technical systems and are consequently implemented in the methodology. These paradigms are operationalized to explicitly address the mentioned major objectives of agile development processes, which are currently showing are large gap between expected benefit and realized benefit in industrial practice. The methodology is applied to the real development process of an RGB laser light source for digital cinema projectors, which is summarized as a case study in the paper. Insights from this application are equally discussed as the resulting next steps in further developing and aligning the methodology to the needs of industrial practice.