Posts Tagged ‘hugh’

A Tale of Two Conferences

by Hugh Beyer

I’ve attended two conferences in the last three weeks—Jared Spool’s UX Immersions conference, and CHI 2012, the primary computer-human interaction conference. UX Immersions was the smaller conference, focusing this year on the Agile/UX interface and on design for mobile devices. It was a great group of very focused people and, as it was run by Jared’s [...]

The Limits of Iterative Development

by Hugh Beyer

One of the ongoing questions in Agile development is whether and how much up-front design needs to be done. This is my perspective.

Agile 2011

by Hugh Beyer

I’m back from Agile 2011. Another week spent in one of the most beautiful parts of America, with sunny days in the 70’s—spent in windowless, air-conditioned rooms with a bunch of computer geeks. I wouldn’t have had it any other way. The Agile conference continues to be one of the more exciting conferences around, and [...]

Simple Methods for Reliable User Involvement

by Hugh Beyer

Hugh will be presenting at the Agile conference again this year, talking about basic techniques for getting users involved in your Agile sprints. From the conference program: One of the difficult problems faced by an Agile team is that of getting reliable user input. Since Agile projects depend on minimal up-front planning and specification, user [...]

Phase 0

by Hugh Beyer

Has any Agile project ever kicked off without a Phase 0? I don’t think so. But if you’ve been working happily without a Phase 0, I’d like to hear about it.

InContext at CHI 2011

by Karen Holtzblatt

InContext presents 3 sessions at CHI this year

The Role of the UX Professional on an Agile Team

by Hugh Beyer

Making compelling products and applications

Hugh Beyer

by Hugh Beyer

Hugh provides the technical expertise to support InContext’s design solutions. His extensive understanding of the unique and varied capabilities of a wide range of technical platforms enables InContext to design innovative solutions in virtually any development environment. He works closely with clients’ engineering teams and developers to mesh often opposing points of view to build [...]

Agile’s Just a Fad

by Hugh Beyer

“Agile is just a fad.” Somebody said that to me the other day, and I’m sure you’ve heard the same if you’re involved in Agile development at all. I had the usual half-defensive, half-annoyed reaction one has when on the receiving end of such a remark. But then I started to mull over the question. [...]

Changing Minds is Hard Work

by Hugh Beyer

I’ve been telling people for years that thinking is hard work. At the end of a day building an affinity when everyone’s brain is completely fried even though all they’ve done for the day is stick Post-its on the wall—“See, thinking is hard work!” I say with a chipper smile, and everybody hates me. This [...]

The Agile 2010 Conference: Agile Grows Up

by Hugh Beyer

I’m on my way back from Agile 2010, the main industry conference on Agile methods and tools. If I had to choose one theme for the conference, it would be something like “Agile Grows Up”—not only has Agile become mainstream, but the community is starting to recognize and tackle the real issues of doing development in organizations.

Why Developers Don’t Think Systemically

by Hugh Beyer

BJ Clark over at Marked as Pertinent has an interesting post on who should do acceptance testing. He starts there, but he spends most of the post on the really interesting question, which is the role of the Interaction Designer (ID). His claim, which I agree with, is that the ID is responsible for the [...]

Designing Services

by Hugh Beyer

The fun thing about being a consultant is that you get to work with lots of different teams and lots of different companies. And that means you get to work on very different types of problems. With that in mind, let me tell you about my week. I was coaching a firm that provides HR [...]

Essential Agile

by Hugh Beyer

The essential core of agile is fast iterations tested with user feedback. Everything else is there to make that core work better, faster, or in a more organized way. Throw away everything else if you must but don’t trade off this core. Let me explain why…

Innovation is Easy

by Hugh Beyer

People usually think that coming up with an innovative idea is the hard part. But as I see it, that’s the easy part. The hard part is actually acting on the innovation.

InContext at Agile 2009 Conference

by Hugh Beyer

Agile 2009 is the yearly international conference on agile software development. I’ll be presenting a tutorial called Four Core Concepts for Fast User Feedback in which I’ll be talking about techniques for getting good (and real) customer feedback into agile iterations. It should be a good time–these conferences are generally fun and insightful. See you [...]

Hey! You’re Standing in My Space!

by Hugh Beyer

This year I made it to the CHI (Computer/Human Interaction) conference for the first time in a while. It was fun to see old friends and new research—lots of thought-provoking papers and some fun and cool technology. But it’s the keynote that really struck a chord with me. Judith Olson talked about body language and [...]

A Good Week

by Hugh Beyer

It’s been a good week. Some days you go home wondering what you accomplished; other days you feel like you really earned your keep. That’s the kind of week I had. Here’s the story.