In this series of blog posts (tagged with UX Methodology), we at Veracity Solutions will try to elucidate how this process works for us.

This post is an effort to clear up some misconceptions about UX design and identify some common terms and roles to expect when doing UX design… especially within an Agile development environment.

The 5 Roles of User Experience

There are five terms that cover the tasks that can be expected in a project implementing effective user experience design. Keep in mind that this does not mean you need a small army to run your UX design initiative. Most UX designers can spearhead more than one of these roles. But it is important to remember that these roles each involve time (also known as money) and each role is important to the process.

Without further ado, the five UX roles are:

• User Research
• Information Architecture (IA)
• Interaction Design (IxD)
• Visual Design (VisD)
• UI Development (UI Dev)

For each of these roles, we will cover the following:

• Definition of the role (what it is, what it’s for, how it’s done)
• Deliverable (what do other people on the team see)
• Where in the dev process this role take place
• Tangible (profitable) benefits
• Silverlight/WPF technologies that facilitate this task

All of our work is done in using the Agile methodology and a good deal of it is done in Microsoft technologies. As a result, we’re focusing this series with those two concepts in mind. This doesn’t mean that people who work in non-Microsoft technologies will be lost at sea. Only that those who do use the Microsoft technologies will find additional information specific to WPF and Silverlight development.

The chart below is quick summary of how these roles fit together. The blocks indicate where the roles take place and the text near the arrows indicate what kind of deliverables come from each role and inform the next role or step in the design or development process. We’ll highlight how these roles work together in more detail in the coming posts.

For more on UX and Agile, make sure you read the Scott Barnes post Can You Mix UX with Agile and Anthony Colfelt’s Bringing User Centered Design to the Agile Environment.

More to come…