HCI usability techniques in agile development

Abstract

Background: Interest in the integration of the agile software development process (ASDP) and user-centred design (UCD) has grown over the last decade. However, there are not many papers that study this issue holistically and uncover the current state of this integration. Objective: This study sets out to answer the following research question: What is the current state of integration between agile processes and usability techniques? Method: We conduct a systematic mapping study (SMS). A SMS is a form of systematic literature review that aims to identify and classify the research papers published about a specified issue. Results: We retrieved a total of 31 primary studies, suggesting that the agile development community is starting to adopt some usability techniques in its development projects. Most of the human-computer interaction (HCI) techniques that the ASDP is adopting are techniques related to requirements engineering, especially techniques for requirements elicitation and analysis. Judging by the increase in the number of publications over the last decade, the integration of HCI activities and techniques into the ASDP is an issue of notable interest. Conclusions: There are few papers that study the literature holistically and report the current state of usability in the ASDP. Additionally, the literature does not contain a general, formal and systematic proposal to help agile development teams adopt usability techniques in their development projects.