However, I’m increasingly intrigued by what most people mean by Agile and agree that most of the time, it’s not truly Agile.

Apple obviously put form before function, but then their aim seems to be to produce not the best, but the most usable kit. Without putting form before function, this wouldn’t work in any way, shape or form.

UX isn’t easy, and actually most companies do it badly. I agree that it doesn’t always fit into the Agile world easily. Apple do UX so well, that it stands out so much further because of it, but I suspect that they don’t use it in an Agile way.

Sorry Gary, but that last sentence confuses me. This is precisely why Agile and design *are* compatible.

Good design is, as you say, iterative. So is Agile. The mistake people make is they think Agile is merely incremental, ie. you do this bit, then this bit. Contigency for rework has to be built in to the process.

I see Agile simply as a philosophy of building alongside design. It means you ship early and often and learn from your mistakes. That’s exactly what I’d do in a waterfall design stage, except that I’ve actually got a working product rather than a prototype.

Think design. Okay I find this easy as I learn this first before the web, before code etc…

Design is about taking an idea, building on it, recycling it, rejecting it, building another a little different, moving closer to perfection. It always has been like this. From fine art to industrial design.

Its the cycle of repeat, repeat and repeat again. So from a design view isn’t agile suited.