
Failure: An Illustrated Guide
Avi Bryant explains the iterative process that led to the concept, implementation, and UI of Trendly (http://trendly.com/ ), using Smalltalk, Javascript, Ruby and Java in the process.

Avi Bryant explains the iterative process that led to the concept, implementation, and UI of Trendly (http://trendly.com/ ), using Smalltalk, Javascript, Ruby and Java in the process.
Many people who are new to Agile are confused about the place of UI and UX design on Agile teams. Previously many teams have tried keeping the work separate from the team or having the work done one sprint ahead. Recently, there has been more talk about welcoming UI and UX into Agile teams and Lean UX has been at the forefront.
On behalf of the InfoQ team, we are happy to announce our underwhelming first minor UI re-launch in our 5 year history. This re-launch is the first in a set of incremental changes that will end with a homepage re-launch later in the year, with your feedback. This first launch maintains the same look and feel but removes the left bar while expanding the header and footer.
Usability and Teamwork author and consultant Larry Constantine recently wrote two articles about the “Interfaith Marriage” between experience design and agile development. He examines the inherent conflict between the agile and UX perspectives and provides some concrete advice on how to integrate the two into a creative and productive union.
The adage "A picture is worth a thousand words", is sometimes forgotten in the Agile world. At least, this is what many designers on Agile teams believe. In some teams, designers are required to create small increments of the design and this process does not necessarily produce the best results. For other teams wireframes are considered to be bureaucracy which gets in the way of development.
Most programmers would strive hard to build a robust product with Agile practices and clean code. However, the focus on usability leaves much to be desired. This is despite the well known fact that a good user interface design can spell the difference between acceptance of a software product and its failure. If the end users do not like the UI then the product has little chance of success.

Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer present the current status of the browser as a platform and what it takes to be successful: a very fast JavaScript engine, using Canvas or no more drawing plug-ins, thread support, transforming it into a desktop, taking over mobile devices, great UI, and others.

This session addresses abstract notion of simplicity, looks at why it is critical in modern UI design and answers questions: Why does simplicity matter? Is there a meaningful definition of simplicity? Why do design processes and good intentions undermine simplicity? What processes and techniques can software developers use to achieve simplicity?

In this presentation filmed during ThoughtWorks’ Quarterly Technology Briefing, Dave Robertson and John Johnston explain what the Agile and User Centered Design’s (UCD) common denominators are, common values being the most important one in their opinion.