Mission Agile
Overview
Mission Agile was the primary project for my summer 2019 internship with IBM CIO Design in New York, NY. I worked on a team of four design interns. My focus area was UX design and user research. We were tasked with helping designers work better in agile environments. The team conducted background research into how designers currently work in agile to identify pain points. We then moved into design thinking activities to highlight which specific problems we could solve and begin ideating. From here, designed and tested a high fidelity prototype of an online learning aimed at helping designers understand and work with their agile teams better.
Mission Agile Landing Page - High Fidelity Prototype
REsearch Process
Our team began by conducting user interviews. We spoke with designers in a UX, research, and visual design roles, and asked about their typical schedules, makeup of agile teams, and pain points they experience. These user interviews expanded to include the perspectives of developers and iteration managers to ensure we were getting a full picture of how agile teams functions. We also spoke with several agile coaches to understand how they interact with designers, and discuss failures and successes of teams in the past.
In addition to interviews, two surveys were sent out. One went specifically to members of the CIO Design team, and the other went out across the CIO targeting non-design roles. Results were examined for discrepancies between designers and other team roles, and to gain an understanding of how team members view each other and agile methodologies.
From this research we began to build out design artifacts such as personas for each major role on an agile team. The qualitative feedback from our user interviews helped inform specific pain points and issues. The external validity was confirmed through quantitative feedback from a larger population due to the surveys sent out.
Results
Our research helped identify three key pain points for designers working in agile:
Not enough time for discovery/user research
Lack of communication between roles
Inflexible understanding and adaptation of agile
The surveys validated these as the main pain points, and identified other areas for improvement. Specifically, they showed that a large proportion of those in a development role do not view design practices as relevant to them..
Persona developed for a UX designer.
Design process
After identifying major pain points we wanted to address, we followed IBM’s Enterprise Design Thinking guidelines to examine how we would prioritizes problems and begin ideating how to solution. The team participated in several design thinking activities such as an Empathy Map, As-Is Scenario, Big Idea Vignette, Prioritization Grid, and Story Boarding.
We determined we would design an online learning resource for designers to learn more about their agile teams and how to better work within them. The website would feature three learning modules centered around each major pain-point for designers.
Completed Design Thinking Activities showing our progress
Wire-framing and low fidelity Mock UPs
After determining the direction of the project, we began with wire-framing the overall layout of the site and the content for each learning module. The team would start by drawing out the information architecture in white boarding sessions. This would move into a low fidelity mockup. These would be shared with stakeholders and project mentors to get feedback on design and content direction.
Visual Design and HIgh Fidelity Prototypes
After building out low fidelity design work, the team began incorporating visual design and building high fidelity prototypes. The visual design drew on IBM’s internal branding resources. Colors and typography were selected to fit with IBM branding standards. However, unique elements were also incorporated such as graphics which fit into a theme of space and exploration.
High fidelity, clickable prototypes were built out using Sketch and InVision to mimic the website on desktop. These featured full content, visual design, and interactions.
An interaction allowing users to select different roles on their team to learn more about their perspective.
USer testing
Target users (predominately designers working in the CIO) were recruited for 30 minute user tests. Scripts were prepped which sought to address specific questions about the effectiveness of the design and the usefulness of the content.
The high fidelity prototypes were built out to allow the necessary interactions. We were able to gather valuable feedback on the how successful our designs were at conveying useful information. The research was synthesized to specific design recommendations that could be incorporated into the designs.
Iteration of a diagram showing the developer workflow which changed due to user feedback at each stage.
Project Future
Within the timeframe of our internship, we were able to complete background research, design work, and user testing for three learning modules aimed at designers. The long term goal of the project is to create a resource that anyone can use to improve the effectiveness of agile teams with a focus on incorporating design thinking into all aspects of development.
The long terms vision would include content aimed at different job roles and addressing a wider variety of team issues relating to both design thinking and agile.
Our project was presented at the 2019 CIO Intern Showcase in Yorktown, NY.
2019 Intern Showcase in Yorktown, NY.