There are a whole bunch of usability methods out there, and we teach many of them in our courses. However, one can wonder what methods are really used the context of Scrum?

We investigated this question in the paper:

Jia, Y., Larusdottir, M., & Cajander, Å. (2012). The usage of usability techniques in scrum projects. Human-Centered Software Engineering, 331-341.

Not surprisingly the most used method is “Workshops” according to the survey we sent out. The second most common method was lo-fi prototyping. The most commonly used usability technique in Scrum projects is workshops, followed by lo-fi prototyping, interviews and meetings with users, all used by more than half of the participants.You see the whole table from the paper below:

The technique that is most frequently used is lo-fi prototyping used by more than half of the participants two to four times a month.

When we asked practitioners what is the best usability method they answered that formal usability evaluation is one of the best methods, but one can note that few use it!

Conclusions from the study are that the most popular usability techniques are informal. They can be used quickly without much preparation. Formal usability evaluation with users is a highly ranked technique. HOwever, it is not commonly used.