Gardner, T. N., & Aktunc, O. (2022, March), Integrating Usability into the Agile Software Development Life Cycle Using User Experience Practices  Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Gulf Southwest Annual Conference, Prairie View, Texas. 10.18260/1-2--39189

\bibitem{asee_peer_39189}
  Gardner, T. N., \& Aktunc, O. (2022, March), \emph{Integrating Usability into the Agile Software Development Life Cycle Using User Experience Practices}
  Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Gulf Southwest Annual Conference, Prairie View, Texas.
  10.18260/1-2--39189

Tori Nichole Gardner and Ozgur Aktunc.  "Integrating Usability into the Agile Software Development Life Cycle Using User Experience Practices".  2022 ASEE Gulf Southwest Annual Conference, Prairie View, Texas, 2022, March.  ASEE Conferences, 2022.  https://peer.asee.org/39189 Internet.  30 Jan, 2025

\bibitem{asee_peer_39189}
  Tori Nichole Gardner and Ozgur Aktunc.
  "Integrating Usability into the Agile Software Development Life Cycle Using User Experience Practices".
  \emph{2022 ASEE Gulf Southwest Annual Conference, Prairie View, Texas, 2022, March}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2022.
  https://peer.asee.org/39189 Internet.  30 Jan, 2025

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_39189
author = "Tori Nichole Gardner and Ozgur Aktunc"
title = "Integrating Usability into the Agile Software Development Life Cycle Using User Experience Practices"
booktitle = "2022 ASEE Gulf Southwest Annual Conference"
year = "2022"
month = "March"
address = "Prairie View, Texas"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/39189}
number = {10.18260/1-2--39189}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - Session 2022

Integrating Usability into the Agile Software Development Life Cycle Using User Experience Practices

Tori N. Gardner and Ozgur Aktunc
Department of Engineering
St. Mary’s University
One Camino Santa Maria, San Antonio, TX, 78228
 
Abstract 

Software products have become so influential that they occupy the majority of our time and aid people in accomplishing an overwhelming percentage of daily tasks. Because of this trend, usability has become more important than ever, and like other non-functional qualities, needs to be integrated at every stage of the software development life cycle (SDLC) to produce the most usable products. Even so, current development practices generally integrate usability in the testing phase, causing a gap in usability integration that largely ignores the beginning phases of development. The emergence of Agile methodologies, while generally successful in improving the quality of products, may have contributed to this integration gap as developers are opting to wait for user testing since it occurs iteratively. In actuality, the Agile philosophy supports the early integration of usability in the form of processes and the artifacts that they can produce. In this paper, we explore human-computer interaction (HCI) processes and artifacts and propose a development framework that champions early usability integration in an Agile environment by analyzing their effect on the Scrum and Kanban development frameworks. 
Among the processes analyzed are the participatory design processes, joint-application development (JAD) sessions and design thinking activities, ethnographic studies such as contextual task analysis or inquiry, and those that modify the iterative process with the intent of prioritizing analysis and design such as the use of design sprints. Also analyzed are software artifacts that complement the Agile methodology’s iterative nature and tight user-developer feedback loop such as the development of scenarios and user stories, the organizational methods storyboards and Kanban boards, those artifacts that are produced by design thinking activities such as mind maps, and structural planning diagrams like unified modeling language (UML) diagrams. To gain insight regarding the success of the framework, engineering senior design project groups were interviewed on their inclusion of the components of the proposed framework during the requirements gathering, analysis, and design phases of development. The components of the framework are assessed on their adaptability, how well they were accepted by the developers, and their perceived contribution to the usability of the final product. 





Relevant tracks:
•	Graduate Research Papers (student papers only)

Authors:

TORI N. GARDNER
Miss Gardner currently attends St. Mary’s University in pursuit of her MS in software engineering. She graduated with her BS in software engineering in May of 2021 from the same university. Her research interests include human-computer interaction, user experience, and user interface design as well as accessibility.

OZGUR AKTUNC
Ozgur Aktunc, Ph.D., is a Professor of Software Engineering and Graduate Program Director at St. Mary’s University Engineering Department. Dr. Aktunc’s main research area is software engineering with an emphasis on component-based software development. In particular, his research relates to software analysis, software metrics, agile development, and usability of web applications. He also performs outreach activities to improve computing education in San Antonio through summer programs for middle and high school students. 
















AU  - Tori Nichole Gardner
AU  - Ozgur Aktunc
CY  - Prairie View, Texas
DA  - 2022/03/16
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Integrating Usability into the Agile Software Development Life Cycle Using User Experience Practices
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/39189
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--39189
ER  -