program selection system

LANDesk Software started developing their shrink wrapped products using a variant of extreme programming (XP) in 2002. They made significant changes to a large legacy system, but wanted to communicate better with customers. They expanded their Human Factors team to focus on this problem. The Human Factors team developed personae to integrate the user into the development process.

The creation of excellent user experiences often appears to be a forgotten goal in the software development world. This paper discusses the use of a concrete method, Contextual Inquiry, which leads to insights that will help development teams create experiences and interfaces that match user needs and expectations. This method encourages Agile team members to see the world from the users’ perspective by working directly in the users’ context.