Optimising the user experience design process for timeous systems development : a South African case study

Abstract

User Experience (UX) design is the process of creating products that adequately meet users’ needs and result in user satisfaction. In the context of software development, the application of UX design practices has been linked to increased profitability in organisations. Despite the financial benefit organisations stand to gain by adopting UX design practices, previous studies have revealed a low rate of adoption. One key source of resistance to the adoption UX design practices is the perception that adding new steps to an organisation’s software development process would prolong delivery timelines unnecessarily. Such resistance is compounded by the fact that a high proportion of software development projects already exceed their planned durations. The question therefore arises on how the UX design process can be optimised so that it has the least amount of impact on the speed of delivering software. It is this very question that this study answers. In this study, the UX design processes from four case study organisations and six prominent international UX design approaches were reviewed and analysed. From these analyses, commonalities and optimisation opportunities were identified for each process, then synthesised into a proposed framework. This study’s contribution to the Human-Computer Interaction body of knowledge is the proposed Graduated UX Design Adoption (gUXa) framework. The Innovation Resistance Theory (IRT) was used to explain the ability of the gUXa framework to reduce the barrier to UX process adoption due to its potential to optimise the design process for timeous systems development.