I previously worked on a blog for branding and user experience and how that all works together. I'm still going to continue with the blog (and try to be more consistent with the entries) and do the same with this one.

Over the past few years, I've been doing a lot of work with Agile and as a UX professional, have tried to integrate into an Agile team. There are a number of ways to work with developers and business owners in an Agile team, depending on the team, the communication style, how the team works, etc. I think one of the big changes for user experience professionals in the Agile world is simply – what is my role now? I know I go through this quite a bit.

There is some ambiguity about what a UX person does – especially because of all of the areas that can be addressed in UX. For example, I'm not a copywriter, but I know good copy when I see it. I can draft something for a writer to edit, but what I draft is often edited for style to be consistent with the rest of the site. I'm not a visual designer but I know a good, working design when I see it. I only design in 2 colors ([put color name here] and black/white), but I can give feedback as to what is functional. I don't really code or do testing (I sometimes do testing, but that's another story). So what do I do? And why are specialists needed?

From my perspective, I provide insights into what the users want and what their experience with what is being built should be. I help define that experience with the business needs and user's needs in mind and then work with the development team to make sure that we can meet those needs with an easily maintainable codebase that's not expensive to create. With Agile, I'm not required to overdocument and, in fact, like that I don't need to do that anymore. I'd rather talk to the developers and find out what makes most sense and record that conversation for later. I'd rather be on call to work with developers, let them think about what makes sense and give them feedback on what works and what doesn't work.

Lately I've been realizing that I'm not needed a whole lot on a project, but when I'm needed, I'm needed right now. I'll discuss this in future blog entries.

I think for the first entry, I want to cover the need for UX people on a team and in the one after that, what do UX people do.

Hope you enjoy the reading!