The role of User Experience in the Product Development process

Hardly any of us toil away in a mountain cabin or lonely basement. We all have to work with others to get our products built. Good collaboration is a critical feature of ensuring that your UX design solutions add value and are successful. Working collaboratively is more efficient, but most importantly, it helps to ensure that your designs meet the needs of both users and your clients.

As someone who has worked in the field of user experience for decades, received training on half a dozen development methodologies, and completed over 150 agile projects, one thing that I am quite confused about these days is the term waterfall. In pre-agile times, I never worked in any organization that claimed they were doing waterfall development. If I did hear terms like “toss it over the wall”—and they were as derisive back then as they are now. Product development—at least for products that anyone expects to be successful—has always been iterative, incremental, and collaborative.

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