Process: Agile Development

AI-powered user-story generators present a very interesting use case for large language models (LLMs). These applications can assist in the creation of user stories, an essential task in agile development and product management.

I’ve tested a few of them and used Stories on Board, Cookup.AI, Easy-Peasy.AI, and a tool that IBM Consulting has developed, IBM Assistant, to assess the quality of their output in two very different scenarios, as follows:

• Scenario 1—An online application helps strategists create value-chain diagrams for client companies. A value chain is an artifact that strategists use to visualize activities that are strategically relevant to a business and the links between them. This is a useful strategic-management tool that helps give a fuller picture of an organization’s cost drivers and sources of differentiation.
• Scenario 2—A mobile app supports and encourages bike usage within a small metropolitan area. I looked at this scenario further by considering a variant: an app that supports and encourages bike usage within the small French city of Montpellier. Read More

Agile development and UX design are like a couple in an arranged marriage—a relationship between two strangers who are expected to coexist, develop trust and respect, and eventually, love each other. Throw UX research into the mix and you have the makings of an even more awkward alliance, as you can see in this typical conversation between a UX designer and a product owner, somewhere in the middle of Sprint 0:

“I get very uncomfortable when someone makes a design decision without customer contact.”—Dan Ritzenthaler, Senior Product Designer at HubSpot

UX research is vital to creating design solutions for physical products and digital applications that meet the needs of users. UX research should be a well-organized, step-by-step process that lets you understand your target users and feeds realistic contexts and concepts into your product designs. Cognitive bias is an ever-present factor in all human beings that we must overcome to produce optimal design solutions.

UX professionals have adopted many methods of research that include qualitative and quantitative methods. It is highly recommended that UX researchers know about human psychology—the most evident reason being the need to understand behavioral patterns, cognitive loads, and mental models and the ability to identify users’ needs, goals, and frustrations. UX architects provide strategic inputs to designers, enabling them to implement laws relating to the presentation of information to users. Read More