Agile Methods and Interaction Design — Friend or Foe?

Agile methods and interaction design can be seen as incompatible software development methodologies: both suggest processes for creating high-quality software — one is arguing for quickly moving towards the source code level while the other suggests to wait with implementation activities until the design of the software is clearly laid out from a user’s perspective. Agile methods focus on creating quality software with high business value but do not explicitly talk about how to ensure that the software is usable — this is the realm of interaction design. The presentation discusses commonalities and differences between both approaches and points towards integration opportunities: how can interaction design approaches be used by agile teams to create usable software with high business value.

Frank Maurer

Dr. Frank Maurer is a professor at the University of Calgary and leads the Agile Software Engineering group. His research interests include agile software methodologies, engineering digital table applications, executable acceptance test driven development, integrating agile methods with interaction design approaches, framework & API usability, tools for agile teams, and experience management.

Dr. Maurer is a member of the Agile Alliance and a Certified Scrum Master. He is an Associate Editor of IEEE Software and recently served as Program Co-Chair for XP 2009 as well as Agile 2007, two leading conferences on agile methods.