Posted on 09.02.11

Lunch-N-Learn 9: Zucchini with Tomatoes and Chorizo and Agile Story Mapping

by Cesar Torres

Week after week, the Mightybytes Lunch-n-Learn series brings in a guest speaker from our team of designers and developers to share his or her knowledge. This week, however, we went outside our own ranks for the Learning portion of our event.

Up until now, our Lunch-n-Learn professors have always been with us in the room, physically, sharing food and taking questions. This week, we went the virtual route, recruiting the services of User Interface Engineering and their webinar “Story Mapping for UX Practitioners: Tying UX and Agile together.”

In many ways, this virtual Lunch-n-Learn was not that different from the others. The kitchen came alive with noise and activity. We logged into the webinar while Tai served up a lunch dish that celebrated simplicity and delicious ingredients purchased from the Andersonville Farmer’s Market. A simple simmer of zuchini, tomatoes and locally-made chorizo provided a hearty meal for us as we watched the webinar on the monitor in our conference room.

Learn: Using Story Mapping and the Agile Methodology

Jeff Patton’s webinar focused on the ways in which Agile software development methodology can incorporate user story mapping, a technique that can help keep design and development teams focused on user-centered design. This session was not entry-level as Jeff worked under the assumption that attendees were familiar with Agile methods.

Jeff focused mostly on the techniques of story mapping to draw requirements and inform finished product and software releases. He stressed how useful story mapping can be for building shared understanding of project requirements among team members, since it works visually and is less reliant on written requirements.

Story mapping is a technique that borrows elements from card sorts and even cognitive walkthroughs. It is focused on distilling a user’s goals, tasks and other needs in order to learn more about their workflow in completing a task. It can be applied from the ground up to solve a problem and lead a team in the creation of new software.

In turn, it can also be applied to an existing product or piece of software in order to learn more about the differences and similarities in users’ interactions. As in a card sort exercise, Jeff recommends working with internal teams and clients present in the room, and using the basic tenets of the UX practitioner: paper, post-its and markers.

Though the webinar was short on tactical implementations of the software, it provided some nice insights into this application of UX technique into the Agile method, and it certainly should spark plenty of discussion for us in the short and long-term future for our own projects and clients.

Are you using Agile in your organization? If so, how do you merge UX methods into its series of stories, sprints and releases?

Lunch: Zucchini with Tomatoes and Chorizo

Ingredients:

• 1 lb of zucchini
• 2 lbs tomatoes
• 3 shallots
• 3 garlic cloves
• 1 lemon
• 1 lb chorizo

Cut zucchini into quarter-inch disks; cook crumbled chorizo in olive oil for about three minutes, or until beginning to brown, then add diced shallot or onion and minced garlic; continue until the shallot is translucent, a couple of minutes more. Add the zucchini and some chopped tomatoes; cover and cook until the zucchini is tender; about five more minutes. Add some lemon zest and juice, season with salt and pepper, and serve.

Meal serves 8 people.

Stay Tuned

We will be skipping next week’s Lunch-n-Learn because of the installation of new air ducts in the office. But we will return the week of September 12th with a new learning session and another locally sourced meal.

Lunch-N-Learn 10