Methods for developing visualizations in a non-designer environment : A case study

Abstract: Teams consisting of only software developers will occasionally need to develop products that has to be easy to use. User Centered Design (UCD) is one approach to help increase the ease of use of a product and that can be incorporated into the teams’ traditional workflow when needed. The software developer team followed in this thesis had not tried to incorporate UCD into their current workflow when developing such products. So, this thesis looks at how a product designed with an agile/UCD approach differs from a product developed by the software development team’s traditional approach. The two products were designed to solve the same problem. The results show that the product developed with an agile/UCD-approach gave better usability rankings and better external appeal than the one created with the team’s traditional approach. On the other hand, traditional methods constitute a better choice for quick development of products for more technical user groups within the company for example.