Better productivity through agile user experience design

Several challenges have been identified in integrating user experience (UX) design and related activities into agile software development. These include fi nding a balance between up-front interaction design and integrating interaction design with iterative coding, discarding usability testing because of urgent development goals of sprint cycles, and lack of professional usability. Traditional usability methods are often judged too heavy and slow to be integrated effectively into agile ways of working. The need for more simple and low-cost methods has been recognized. Examples of proposed methods include Rapid Contextual Design and Discount Usability Engineering.