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Master's Thesis Faculty of Computer Science Chair of Media Design MASTER'S THESIS IMPROVING DESIGN MATURITY BY APPLYING OPTIMIZED UX DESIGN WORKFLOWS Olga Davydkina MN 3757874 Chair of Media Design Faculty of Computer Science Dresden University of Technology Robotron Datenbank-Software GmbH Stuttgarterstr. 29 01189 Dresden Supervising university lecturer: Herr Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Rainer Groh Supervisors by Robotron: Frau Ines Hermel, Herr Dr. Hilko Donker Dresden, 29.08.2017 NOTE OF THANKS This research was supported by Robotron Datenbank-Spftware GmbH. I thank all the colleagues from Robotron, who provided insight and expertise that greatly assisted my research. I express my warm thanks to Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Rainer Groh and Dr.-Ing. Ingmar S. Franke for their aspiring guidance, constructive criticism and friendly advice during my research. I thank all the employees of the Chair of Media Design at the Dresden University of Technology for supporting and inspiring me during all my studies. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my advisors from Robotron Ines Hermel and Dr. Hilko Donker for the continuous support of my master’s thesis and related research, for their patience, motivation, and immense knowledge. Their guidance helped me in all the time. Last but not the least, I would like to thank my family: my parents and my friends for supporting me spiritually throughout writing this thesis. CONFIRMATION I confirm that I independently prepared the thesis and that I used only the references and auxiliary means indicated in the thesis. Dresden, 29 August 2017 ABSTRACT User experience (UX) describes the way a user feels when interacting with a software and plays an important role for the user’s satisfaction with a software product. However, it is often neglected in business-to-business software products in spite of the fact that these are often very complex. Since a good user experience improves the customer‘s productivity, it can improve the economic success of business-to-business software companies as well. In this master‘s thesis, we focus on the German enterprise software development company Robotron Datenbank-Software GmbH. At the moment user experience does not play a central role in the development cycle at Robotron. Design decisions are not managed centrally, but are often made by software developers, which leads to additional costs, redundant programming efforts and limitations in the user experience. The goal of this master‘s thesis is to improve the actual situation sustainably by proposing changes to the software development cycle at Robotron. The basis for this are UX maturity models, which describe the sequence of stages companies process on the way to improve the user experience of their software. First, we analyze the actual development cycle at Robotron based on interviews that we conduct with Robotron employees. Then, we classify Robotron‘s current state into the UX maturity model by Nielsen and determine the next realistic UX maturity stage to achieve. We find out that the main requirements for this are the launch of an official user-centered design process, the creation of a centralized UX team, an iterative design development process, field studies and a stable UX budget. We develop a concept which proposes solutions for all these requirements and is based on an agile iterative design process. Moreover, we verify the concept by using it for a real UX problem in one of Robotron‘s products. For this we develop a high-fidelity prototype which shows first improvements of the user experience. TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract........................................................................................................................... 1 1 Introduction .............................................................................................................. 2 2 Basics and terms ..................................................................................................... 4 2.1 User Experience (UX) Design ........................................................................... 5 2.1.1 Separation between interaction design and technical realization ............... 5 2.1.2 User Experience (UX) ................................................................................ 5 2.1.3 Usability ..................................................................................................... 6 2.1.4 User-centered design (UCD) ...................................................................... 7 2.1.5 Usability and user experience .................................................................... 8 2.1.6 Information architecture (IA) ....................................................................... 8 2.1.7 User interface (UI) design .......................................................................... 9 2.1.8 User interaction design .............................................................................. 9 2.2 User Experience Design Process ...................................................................... 9 2.2.1 Linear Design Process ............................................................................. 10 2.2.2 Iterative design process ........................................................................... 12 2.2.3 Usability Evaluation Methods ................................................................... 15 2.2.4 Prototyping Techniques ........................................................................... 17 2.3 Software Development Methodologies ............................................................ 19 2.3.1 Waterfall Model ........................................................................................ 20 2.3.2 Joint Application Development (JAD) ....................................................... 22 2.3.3 Agile Software Development .................................................................... 23 2.4 Summary ........................................................................................................ 25 3 Related work .......................................................................................................... 26 3.1 UX Maturity Models ......................................................................................... 26 3.1.1 Criteria for the choice of the UX maturity model: ...................................... 26 3.1.2 Jakob Nielsen maturity model .................................................................. 27 3.1.3 Levels of UX Maturity ............................................................................... 28 3.1.4 Detailed Stages of UX Maturity ................................................................ 31 3.2 Integration of UX design methodologies into software development ................ 37 3.2.1 Design education ..................................................................................... 37 3.2.2 Time gain for product discovery and user research .................................. 37 3.2.3 Incremental and Iterative design .............................................................. 38 3.2.4 Sprint zero................................................................................................ 38 3.2.5 Designers work one sprint ahead ............................................................. 38 3.2.6 Inclusion of artifacts ................................................................................. 38 3.2.7 Day to day success .................................................................................. 38 3.2.8 Team collaboration ................................................................................... 39 3.3 Summary......................................................................................................... 39 4 Analyses ................................................................................................................ 40 4.1 Presentation of Robotron Datenbank-Software GmbH .................................... 40 4.1.1 Product overview...................................................................................... 41 4.2 Survey ............................................................................................................. 43 4.2.1 Preparation of the survey ......................................................................... 44 4.2.2 Interview Process ..................................................................................... 46 4.3 Evaluation of the Survey Results ..................................................................... 46 4.3.1 robotron*ecount ....................................................................................... 46 4.3.2 robotron*Webportal 2.0 ............................................................................ 52 4.3.3 robotron*Daphne ...................................................................................... 55 4.3.4 Conclusion of the survey results ............................................................... 58 5 User Experience Maturity Classification ................................................................. 60 5.1 Analysis of Robotron at the low UX maturity level ........................................... 60 5.1.1 Importance of user-centered design at the company ................................ 61 5.1.2 Existence of a user interface in the development cycle ............................ 61 5.1.3 Availability of funding for user experience design ..................................... 61 5.1.4 Conclusion of the low maturity level analysis ............................................ 62 5.2 Analysis
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