SIGIA-L Mail Archives: SIGIA-L: Extreme Programming v. Interact
SIGIA-L: Extreme Programming v. Interaction Design
From: Tal Herman (therman_at_seralat.com)
Date: Wed Jan 16 2002 - 17:52:43 EST
There is a very interesting article on Fawcette Technical Publications about
differences between Extreme Programming and Interaction Design in the form
of interviews with Kent Beck and Alan Cooper. As the article describes it:
"Kent Beck is known as the father of "extreme programming," a process
created to help developers design and build software that effectively meets
user expectations. Alan Cooper is the prime proponent of interaction design,
a process with similar goals but different methodology. We brought these two
visionaries together to compare philosophies, looking for points of
consensus—and points of irreconcilable difference."
<http://www.fawcette.com/interviews/beck_cooper/default.asp>
For those of you who are, as I am, involved in shops that are moving to some
form of extreme programming methodology, this article should be a must read.
I have done some reading in the area and work with a number of highly
qualified programmers who are extremely enthusiastic about XP.
I find the extreme programming approach very useful as a business owner
because I see how it can cut down on costs and wasted effort from the
programming side of the equation, making the possibility of profit closer to
a reality. On the other hand, as an information architect and interaction
designer, I need to acknowledge the shortcomings of the process. Alan
Cooper points these shortcomings out quite strongly when he talks about
customers/clients not being able to articulate their problems/concerns in
terms that are useful to the XP process. He says:
"If you go to the customers, have a whole series of discussions with them,
then build what they want, when all is said and done, you're going to end up
with a really well-constructed white elephant that doesn't solve their
problem. Their problem is, they have to integrate information and their
company at a much higher level. These are not constructionary interface
issues." <http://www.fawcette.com/interviews/beck_cooper/page5.asp>
Some of our projects are small enough that the programmers and I can
understand the client's application needs from a social and business
perspective and then reflect those needs in a set of XP-style "stories" that
encompass the necessary functionalities. In this scenario, XP appears to be
a real god-send. We avoid coding unnecessary functionalities, we have
acceptance tests the client can understand for every piece of functionality,
and we can roll out pieces of the code for client evaluation on a regular
basis, beginning within a week or two of the start of a project.
On larger projects, however, I have to agree with Alan Cooper's evaluation
of the problem. XP proceeds from the basis of customer stories. This is
only useful if these stories actually describe what the customer needs, not
what they think they want. I think one answer may be to integrate XP into
the interaction design process by having the programmers participate in the
interaction design, something that I'm fortunate enough to be able to do at
my company. (So far we haven't had the opportunity to do this with a large
project, but I'm hopeful that it can be done.) What this may mean is that
XP as a process is modified such that programming starts early, but not so
early that we haven't had a chance to find out the difference between what
the customer says they want and what they really need.
I certainly don't mean to say that all customers are ignorant of their
needs; but I have been an IA for over 5 years now and have seen my share of
businesses who seem to think that adding pizza delivery services and a bbs
forum to their banking website will result in a successful business model.
If we were to follow a pure XP model, we might start with a story like, "I
need my customers to be able to order pizza via my website," develop a
really efficient method for making that happen, and never really address the
serious questions about why they think they need pizza delivery services on
their banking website. Obviously, this is a little flippant, but I hope
that my point is made.
I'm very interested in hearing anyone's experiences with using XP and how
that process synchs up with information architecture and interaction design.
Tal
tal herman||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
therman-at-seralat.com||http://www.seralat.com
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