Towards a Model for Bridging Agile Development and User-Centered Design

As a reaction to the complexity and rigor of commercial software development processes, “agile” software development methods have gained increasing attention. Agile methods prioritize delivering working software over producing extensive models and documentation. Agile processes focus on the people involved and the required interaction instead of on processes and tools. Furthermore, it emphasizes that responding to the changes that invariably take place over the course of a project is more important than strictly adhering to a contract or plan. From the perspective of usability and user-centered design, however, agile methods do not inherently provide the required support to the development process. This being said, the agile philosophy does not prevent focusing on usability during the design process: in fact, the agile and user-centered approaches have the potential to work very well together. This chapter intends to describe the core principles of agile development and investigate to what extent usability-enhancing activities can be supported within the agile approaches. As a conclusion, it will outline a model for integrating agile development and user-centered design.