Usability guru Jakob Nielsen yesterday published a report advocating the use of low-fi prototypes to improve quality in websites built using Agile methodologies.

The report, Agile Usability: Best Practices for User Experience on Agile Development Projects, is based on case studies from 12 companies that use Agile methodologies and emphasise usability, and is supplemented by a survey of 105 professionals.

In his Alertbox, Nielsen wrote there are risks with using Agile because by breaking the project into smaller parts, overall usability may suffer, but this issue may be overcome by using prototypes.

To address this, teams can design storyboards and prototypes that embed the user interface architecture and use these tools as reference points for designing individual features. To avoid spending too much time up front, teams can design low-fidelity prototypes — such as paper prototypes — that don’t require coding. Just like we’ve always advocated.

Nielsen, J. (2008, November 17). Agile Development Projects and Usability. Retrieved November 18, 2008, from http://www.useit.com/alertbox/agile-methods.html

Nielsen recommends that a change of mindset is required in Agile teams to support user experience centred design.

Personally, I’m very interested in how using visual specs can improve the efficiency of development processes and have been experimenting with a variety of methods of creating them. Stay tuned - more soon.

The summary describes the five trends analysed in the report:

• UX people are bridges: embedded with the team but also involved in high level/early planning
• UX work is early, flexible: done up-front to storyboard level with good expectation setting that changes will happen
• Low-fi prototype is the ongoing spec: owned by UX, agreed by stakeholders
• UX work happens in a parallel track: pair complex back-end sprints with UX intensive work
• Guerilla style UX validation: fast, discount methods run frequently and regularly on early code

In my experience, these ring true. I think it’s best to get user experience people involved from the get-go, with a continued focus on user experience throughout the development. Save a lot of rework in the end.