I’m not a programmer or designer, but in my experience educational institutions provide a great foundation for learning the skills needed in the working world; however, most of my learning has been accomplished on-the-job. As a marketing major, I was required to take several business courses (including economics and statistics) in addition to social science courses to become a well-rounded student, but I was never advised that I might need certain communications courses (like design – to be able to understand the way things are done, or writing for PR purposes – as PR and marketing are closely related and often integrated) that definitely would have given me a leg up in my career. Not every student is as self-prepared as he/she should be while signing up for college courses, but the professors advising him/her should be.

With IT, the industry is ever-evolving at such a rapid pace, that I don’t think professors or administrators are as aware of new trends or methods as quickly as they should be. For folks like @Mary who need employees with specific skillsets prior to starting a new position, it is important to not only know what is being taught in academia, but you should also be influencing academia.

If you often hire graduates from specific institutions, feel free to give your feedback on what you are looking for. You need students to have exposure, at the very least, of Agile (or other) processes or to be able to work successfully with students from complementary disciplines. Many institutions are looking for and open to corporation feedback so that they may better prepare their students. And if you have the skills (and the time) to share your expertise on certain topics, apply to be an adjunct professor or hold a workshop to introduce these students to new processes.

Some students just need someone to open their eyes to all the variations and nuances of certain disciplines and, very unfortunately, not all professors are sure what new topics to include in their curriculum, some aren’t as up-to-date as they should be, and some simply may not hold the skills to an expert degree to teach the subject.

Bringing to light the information discussed in this post is an important start to develop the type of developers and designers needed in the industry. I hope others will share the information needed to more rapidly affect college curriculum.

Great discussion!
~Andrea

From my group’s perspective, the experience turned out to be great. We reached a good level of collaboration and we ended up developing one of the most successful projects in our class. Not all groups worked well like ours though. Few things that contributed to our success: (a) each team had a leader, (b) each member showed great accountability and (c) the expertise level of the members was relatively the same.

Even though pairing seems to be the way to go, I think there are several challenges to do that in school. Sometimes, students are not prepared to work in teams yet. If you just put different people together, you might end up creating conflict instead of collaboration. Team work is more than just pairing; it’s creating an environment in which collaboration can exist naturally.

Agile will need, therefore, to become mainstream before its multidisciplinary approach is even considered, especially since it suggests a span between academic lines.

M

Thanks for your comments!
-Anders

Agile development and UX work hand in hand quite well, although I don’t think that’s the issue your article addresses. It seems that your article makes the case for pairing at the academic level, which I completely agree with.

As you well know, the opportunity you had at the University of Michigan was rare. I, too, came into pair programming simply by happenstance. Yes, it happened in an agile environment; but I don’t think that was a prerequisite. A lot about the situation I found myself in at a web startup was because I was at a web startup. Which is to say, there aren’t hard and fast rules to online web development.

It’s really the idea of cross-pollination that got me hooked on UX––finding perspective in software development is a difficult thing. Far too often, our work is done with tunnel-visition. We work at desks for 8 hours a day building software that people might use “on the go,” for only 30 minutes at a time.

I think, fundamentally, the pairing process turns into a kind of contextual interview for UX designers. Learning how users, developers, stakeholders, etc, see a product helps us, in turn, to better account for their perspective. In fact, as UXers work as software ambassadors for a living, so it would seem that “agile” or the idea of pairing may be core to the UX discipline altogether.

Like Mary says (and thanks Mary for your comments as well!), Agile is a reality that you can’t ignore. Whether you like it or not, agree with it or not, it is a reality that UX practitioners need to be prepared for.

In other words, this is not about finger-pointing; this is about raising awareness about a problem I have seen first-hand in the UX community – that way too many of them are still very much stuck in a waterfall mindset, which is becoming more archaic with every passing day.

And that mindset, in my opinion, originates in the academic institutions where the foundation for their practice is set. Even if, as you say, many in the UX community do not have a formal background in UX, I think that more and more of those entering the field will have a formal degree specifically in UX or interaction design. And it is there that we have an opportunity to expose them to the Agile thinking and values that they are evermore certain to encounter when entering the workforce.

Anders brings up several interesting points that merit further discussion: how is Agile taught in UX programs and how is pair designing taught in UX programs. Dave’s comments makes me wonder about the geographic placement of UX program graduates.
Here in the Bay Area, graduates of UX programs have a strong presence. I’m curious to find out what is being taught because these are the folks I may be hiring.

Further it assumes that most non-agile UXers are academically trained (regardless of type of program). I would say from early survey results that I have undertaken that most UXers have no formal design or even academic education whatsoever.

Third and this has been MY issue w/ “Agile UX” is that you put the blame on IxD programs. And I’m not saying there isn’t room for tons of improvement, but its not like IxD programs are holding the gates up out of fear of being drowned by programmers.

But let’s take on the truism #1. In my experience a solid waterfall approach has been infinitely more successful cross-disciplinarily than any type of good or bad Agile I have worked with (and I’ve been forced to work with many). Statistically or through any other empirical measure (and I don’t have anything but anecdotal evidence myself) no one has PROVEN that Agile is better than non-agile. A. b/c there is no single “agile” and second because no one has tried to do cross process studies.

But the one thing I cannot argue with in your post is that it is always great to sit next to and collaborate with people from different points of view. I’m not sure that “pairing” is the best method for this type of collaboration as there are many ways to gain these stakeholder inputs and have the types of checks & balances you allude to as important above.

Again though, finger pointing as you do in this piece, pointing at one side of at least a 2-sided equation where the other side has much less understanding of design than design has of engineering in my experience, is really disingenuous.

– dave