Integrating User eXperience Principles and Practices into Software Development Organizations: An Empirical Investigation
Doctoral thesis, 2018
Background: To be effective, User eXperience (UX) principles and practices need to be integrated into development processes and organizations, what we refer to as UX integration. However, software companies often face various challenges that hinder a successful UX integration.
Objective: The aim of this thesis is to facilitate and improve the current state of UX integration in the software industry. To that end, we present an empirical investigation of current UX integration challenges and success factors and analyze them in relation to other software quality characteristics, in particular, usability.
Method: We performed a series of studies, mainly in the Swedish software industry and applied a variety of methods including interviews, observations, and workshops. We used Grounded Theory (GT) and thematic analysis to drive our data gathering and to analyze our data.
Results: We showed that UX integration challenges and success factors are both technical and organizational, however, they mainly belong to the latter category. We found that various decisions that are made outside the authority of UX practitioners have an inevitable impact on enabling or prohibiting UX integration and that the integration is influenced by various changes that organizations undergo over time as well as planned UX initiatives. Our findings underline the similarities between UX integration and organizational change, in general, and Software Process Improvement (SPI) in particular. We also found that the known unique characteristics of UX (subjective, holistic, dynamic, context-dependent, and worthwhile) have implications not only for the day-to-day work of practitioners but also for UX integration. Based on our findings, we propose various UX integration principles and practices to help software companies in their integration efforts.
Conclusion: We argue that to prevent a lopsided focus on the pragmatic aspect of UX in the software industry, software practitioners and researchers should explicitly differentiate between UX and other software quality characteristics, in particular, usability and address the unique characteristics of UX in their work. In addition, they should apply the existing body of knowledge in the two fields of organizational change and SPI especially to address the organizational issues concerning UX integration. Although our focus has been on UX, our findings also may shed light on integrating other multidisciplinary and emerging concepts into the complex context of software organizations.
Objective: The aim of this thesis is to facilitate and improve the current state of UX integration in the software industry. To that end, we present an empirical investigation of current UX integration challenges and success factors and analyze them in relation to other software quality characteristics, in particular, usability.
Method: We performed a series of studies, mainly in the Swedish software industry and applied a variety of methods including interviews, observations, and workshops. We used Grounded Theory (GT) and thematic analysis to drive our data gathering and to analyze our data.
Results: We showed that UX integration challenges and success factors are both technical and organizational, however, they mainly belong to the latter category. We found that various decisions that are made outside the authority of UX practitioners have an inevitable impact on enabling or prohibiting UX integration and that the integration is influenced by various changes that organizations undergo over time as well as planned UX initiatives. Our findings underline the similarities between UX integration and organizational change, in general, and Software Process Improvement (SPI) in particular. We also found that the known unique characteristics of UX (subjective, holistic, dynamic, context-dependent, and worthwhile) have implications not only for the day-to-day work of practitioners but also for UX integration. Based on our findings, we propose various UX integration principles and practices to help software companies in their integration efforts.
Conclusion: We argue that to prevent a lopsided focus on the pragmatic aspect of UX in the software industry, software practitioners and researchers should explicitly differentiate between UX and other software quality characteristics, in particular, usability and address the unique characteristics of UX in their work. In addition, they should apply the existing body of knowledge in the two fields of organizational change and SPI especially to address the organizational issues concerning UX integration. Although our focus has been on UX, our findings also may shed light on integrating other multidisciplinary and emerging concepts into the complex context of software organizations.
Organizational change
User eXperience
Usability
Software Process Improve- ment
Empirical Research
Quality Characteristics
Room Omega, Jupiter Building, Hörselgången 5, Campus Lindholmen
Opponent: Associate Professor Marta Larusdottir
Author
Pariya Kashfi
Chalmers, Computer Science and Engineering (Chalmers), Software Engineering (Chalmers)
Integrating User eXperience practices into software development processes: implications of the UX characteristics
PeerJ Computer Science,; Vol. 3(2017)
Journal article
A conceptual ux-aware model of requirements
Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics),; Vol. 9856(2016)p. 234-245
Paper in proceeding
Evidence-based Timelines for User eXperience Software Process Improvement Retrospectives
2016 42nd Euromicro Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications (Seaa),; (2016)p. 59-62
Paper in proceeding
Kashfi P., Feldt R., Nilsson A., Integrating UX Principles and Practices into Software Development Organizations: A Case Study of Influencing Events
Kashfi P., Feldt R., Nilsson A., Integrating UX Principles and Practices into Software Development Organizations: A Case Study of Challenges and Success Factors
Stakeholder Involvement: A Success Factor for Achieving Better UX Integration
Other conference contribution
User eXperience (UX) is often an important factor in the business success of software systems. To deliver a good UX, software designers and developers (practitioners) need to apply a variety of UX principles and practices. To be effective, these principles and practices need to be integrated (UX integration) into organizations and be part of development processes. However, UX integration is challenging and often practitioners struggle with it.
To improve the state of UX integration in the software industry, this thesis intends to increase the community’s understanding of UX integration and provide practitioners with some related guidance.
The work of this thesis is performed in close collaboration with practitioners mainly in Sweden. We applied a variety of methods including interviews, observations, and workshops to understand UX integration challenges and success factors from the practitioners' perspective.
We found that the known unique characteristics of UX (subjective, holistic, dynamic, context-dependent, and worthwhile) have implications not only for the day-to-day work of practitioners but also for UX integration. Therefore, researchers and practitioners need to explicitly address these characteristics in their work and in integration efforts. In addition, our findings underline the similarities between UX integration and organizational change, and in particular, software process improvement. Therefore, we argue that, in their integration efforts, researchers and practitioners should apply and benefit from the existing body of knowledge in these two fields.
To improve the state of UX integration in the software industry, this thesis intends to increase the community’s understanding of UX integration and provide practitioners with some related guidance.
The work of this thesis is performed in close collaboration with practitioners mainly in Sweden. We applied a variety of methods including interviews, observations, and workshops to understand UX integration challenges and success factors from the practitioners' perspective.
We found that the known unique characteristics of UX (subjective, holistic, dynamic, context-dependent, and worthwhile) have implications not only for the day-to-day work of practitioners but also for UX integration. Therefore, researchers and practitioners need to explicitly address these characteristics in their work and in integration efforts. In addition, our findings underline the similarities between UX integration and organizational change, and in particular, software process improvement. Therefore, we argue that, in their integration efforts, researchers and practitioners should apply and benefit from the existing body of knowledge in these two fields.
Areas of Advance
Information and Communication Technology
Subject Categories
Software Engineering
Human Computer Interaction
ISBN
978-91-7597-833-8
Doktorsavhandlingar vid Chalmers tekniska högskola. Ny serie: 4514
Publisher
Chalmers
Room Omega, Jupiter Building, Hörselgången 5, Campus Lindholmen
Opponent: Associate Professor Marta Larusdottir