It’s been a while since I have written a new blog entry. Being emerged in the Scrum process has definitely kept me busy. I have also been working on some personal development. I’ve started a new eating lifestyle that will hopefully result in losing some weight. And I’ve started writing down a lot of recipes that I may turn into a healthy cookbook one day. I also went to Orlando for two days last week to see my best friend who was visiting from Hawaii.  I haven’t been recording this information because my Blog is generally focused on UX related topics, but it explains the lapse since my latest update.

I stated previously that when I started the Scrum process for my latest project, that I felt more like I was in the role of a business analyst and interaction designer than a Human Factors Engineer.  I spent the last week updating our new Employee Orientation to reflect the new Scrum project management methodology, and I have a new project on the horizon. This is very exciting for me because the last project I worked on was for UI enhancements to an existing application, whereas this project will be building a new application from the bottom up. Therefore I hope to be able to do more real Human Factors work such as building personas, and creating mental models. And basically contributing more towards the to the requirements, and functionality, and more original design than what I had the opportunity to do previously. This is exciting because it means I will be in uncharted territory and doing some things for the first time. I expect this will be a huge learning opportunity for me as well.

Today I cracked open my Mental Models workbook from training that I attended by instructor Indy Young. I brushed-up on customer data analysis techniques before going through data collected through customer visits. This consists of summarizing content by using a verb + noun = atomic task. This will be used in an affinity or mental model diagram that I will create. I am recording the users behaviors, philosophies and feelings and leaving out the tools/medium, statements of fact, explanations, circumstance and complaints. In a nutshell I’m getting back to doing Human Factors related work and I’m loving it!  Yippie!