Sustainable Pace, Agile, and The Big Design Refactor

Lean UX NYC, 2013

Jonathan Berger, Pivotal Labs

1. Sustainable Pace

Call to arms

I see many

unhappy designers

designers feel

overwhelmed

wasn't agile supposed to be a

solution?

instead, designers feel

rushed

designers feel

disempowered

designers

billing model

options?

work harder

work

longer

asked to work at someone else's

tempo

this is an

unwinnable race

design culture

rock star

all nighters

design-school crit

expected to be right

expected to be perfect

sustainable pace

constant speed

empathy

call to arms

designers should adopt sustainable pace as a value

2. Agile

solution

problem

Why?

similar problems

• Sclerosis around processes and tools,
• Compulsive (CYA) documentation,
• Endless negotiation about targets and deliverables,
• A fixation on following old plans in a new situations.

• Individuals & interactions over processes & tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

instead of

designers coping with Agile

why aren't we asking

"How can Agile serve designers?"

3. Big Design Refactor

In the beginning...

There's a

visual design system

Then

the project goes Agile

Development solutions

I.N.V.E.S.T., small pieces

Design solutions

Malleable, never done, holistic

product iterates

degrades under the weight of a thousand tiny changes

designers have to play catch-up in a race they can't win

Understand and accept

this design-system degradation is an affordance of differently-sized design and development cycles

Agile Designers Prayer

Grant me the serenity

To accept the things I cannot change

The courage to change the things I can

And the wisdom to know the difference

Designers need not work at developers tempo

stay in-rhythm with development,
not on-pace

Communicate

keep an eye on the health of the graphic system

manage your design debt

How?

• Mention that the system is breaking down
• Keep solving the tactical problems
• keep delivering value

the balance shifts

raise the alarm

Design retro

Do systematic visual Design

What DOES THE BIG DESIGN REFACTOR look like?

• mostly at whiteboards or Adobe Creative Suite
• include product ~4-7x / week
• ping development ~1-2x / week to consult on technical implications

Near the end of Big design refactor

• deliver a set of user stories accompanied by mockups
• It’ll often take an IPM or two to get through all of them
• it’s important that they get implemented soon

Costs of delay

• Nothing feels more like waste than a heavy investment in design
• followed by unacted-upon stories that go stale
• This will kill trust between design product (in both directions)

After the Big Design refactor

• new design is being built
• designers occasionally hop back into Adobe for assets or newly-discovered UX tweaks
• most design time is spent pairing with developers

until the next refactor

• designers pair on stories, work on design problems revealed by user testing
• ~66% development and 33% Adobe apps
• The debt clock is starting to tick again, and once the pain is noticeable, start making noises

“we’re ok for right now, but we’ll need a design refactor in the next 3-5 weeks”

...and the cycle repeats

work with the Big Design Refactor, not against it.

Call to Action

Call to Arms

Designers should recognize the rhythms and tempos of design and development.

Designers should look to agile as a solution, not a problem.

Designers should adopt sustainable pace as a value.

Thank You.

• @jonathanpberger on twitter, github, gmail, pivotallabs.com, everywhere.
• slides at http://jonathanpberger.com/talks
• Thanks to Lane Halley and Giff Constable for feedback on this talk.