Agile UX

Course description

By continuously alternating practice and theory, you will learn the process of developing functions or content with the right user experience based on the user’s needs and situation. The theoretical part of the training is mixed with discussions, experiences and many practical exercises. The training is process-oriented and consists of at least 40-50% of practical work with group work and discussions.

You will learn how to work effectively with usability and UX before, during and after a development project using agile and user-centered methods.

In the practical part of the course, you will develop a prototype of a web-based service – from target audience analysis to an evaluation of the first prototype and learn the development process itself.

Practical work

The practical group work runs as a common thread throughout the training. Based on a company’s needs and target group analysis, we put into practice what we have gone through in each section. Personas and scenarios are created, requirements are formulated and prototypes are developed, which we finally evaluate in a test situation.

1. Introduction

• The purpose of the introduction is to give an overview of what this course is about in terms of UX, usability and user-centered agile design.

2. Usability, UX and user-centered development (UCD)

• Why should you work user-centered and what does it mean? How to develop in a user-centered way as a client, a requirements developer, a developer, Product Owners and Scrum Masters and others, and what you need to know for successful projects.
• Who is the UXer? The professional role, skills and its place in the team are reviewed.

3. Agile user-centered design (Agile UX)

• Today, Agile methods, Scrum and Lean are increasingly used as process methods in development. How do usability and agile development meet, what does Agile UX and Lean UX mean in practice?

4. Target groups and target group analysis

• Target group analysis is the foundation of UX work, how to gain knowledge about the target groups, i.e. the people who are intended to use the service, app or product. Those for whom you want to create value and benefit. Analysis often generates a lot of data, and the course discusses examples of tools for working with these data sets, including the AI-based tools that have come recently.
• The section also includes how to use audience analysis to develop personas, user stories and scenarios.

7. Setting requirements

• Just as when working with agile requirements management, the usability field has been working with iterative requirements development for many years. How do you work with requirements in both traditional and Agile UX?

8. Design

• What is design? Graphic design, information design and interaction design are discussed and how to better understand how users interact with products and services.

9. Prototypes

• What are prototypes, what are wireframes? How to use them in user-centered design? We also go through their various advantages and limitations.
• There are many different tools for prototyping. Some are discussed in the course such as Figma, Balsamiq and AI support for this part of the development process.

10. Conducting usability evaluations

• Evaluating with test persons is at the heart of user-centered work. The course goes through different practical methods and tools to collect data and knowledge about the use of the prototypes developed by the groups.

11. Closure

• Reflections on what participants have learned during these days and what they can take away.