Ask HN: UX/Design in agile teams?
More and more these days I'm seeing developers who are keen to understand more about design/UX. They're poking away an bits of interaction design. You'll often see a few design books on the techie bookshelf (Rosenfeld Media books seem to be especially popular). They'll be trying stuff like usability testing. I could go on.
This isn't true of everybody, or even a majority, and it certainly doesn't suddenly turn developers into skilled designers. However I am encountering more developers who have a broader understanding of the breadth of design/UX - and that's it not just about "making things pretty".
The reverse doesn't seem to be as true. There are certainly designers pick up some front-end skills and are happy spending some time in HTML/CSS/JavaScript land. But I don't encounter very many who are interested, or have any appreciation, of the breadth of skills involved on the development side. Even when their design/UX skills would be stupidly useful.
Has anybody else noticed this?
Is this selection bias on my part? (I spend a bunch of my time trying to encourage agile folk and UX folk to play nice together - so the companies I tend to see have often already figured out that design is important - so it's already going to be valued).
[Disclaimer: I might want to steal (with permission) some of the comments for a talk I'm giving on the "UI in an Agile Process" track at GOTO Copenhagen next month - rambling on about integrating design work throughout development (drop me an e-mail if you want a registration discount :-)]