Agile and UX with Marcy Jacobs and John Tanner

This episode of Sound Notes is all about UX and Agile. Marcy Jacobs, Digital Service Expert for U.S. Digital Service and LeadingAgile’s John Tanner join Dave Prior to explore the topic of UX and Agile. If you’d like to learn more about the specific questions address during the conversation, check out the show notes below.

Show Notes
John and Marcy

Interview begins 00:08
Introductions to Marcy and John 00:42
The difference between UX, UI and Visual Design 02:27
An example of Visual Design, UI and UX 04:11
Focus Groups… BAD! 07:27
Where to get the info about your user/customer 08:46
What is User Centered Design 11:03
How do you help clients develop greater mindfulness about design 14:30
When the stakeholders “know” what the user needs19:25
Features and solution should be driven by understanding the problem 21:48
Changing the Portfolio Mindset 23:36
When they don’t know that they don’t understand the problem 25:40
Moving past the “just get it launched, we’ll fix it later” mindset 27:52
What do we mean by “MVP” and what do people actually need (not what do they want)? 29:43
What UX Metrics should we use to just success 31:28
Intranets… and pain 34:29
How much is good design is enough?Is there a point at which good design is not valuable? 36:44
Enticing management to support better design 38:52
If we are going to iterate, can’t just we fix the design later? 41:00
Dave’s hypothetical situation and a design-centric response 42:50
UX and Dev to working together on understanding user needs 45:59
Getting a more comprehensive view of what his happening for the user when they interact with hat you are building 48:51
What one thing do Marcy and John wish people understood about design 50:43
Getting the world to shift it’s thinking about design 51:51
Reaching Marcy and John for more information 54:27
Agile DC – Dave Nicolette Teaser 54:52

If you’d like to get in touch with Marcy Jacobs, you can find her on LinkedIn

John Tanner can be reached on the LeadingAgile site at  or via LinkedIn at

If you’d like to check out Agile DC to learn more about the even John mentioned, check out their website.