Biography

Sean is a UX Architect working for Microsoft and his passion is to ensure software delivered brings value to organizations and end-users in an equal manner. Sean is mostly involved in requirements engineering, envisioning workshops, and UI/UX design.

Sean started his UI/UX journey as a software tester where he learned what bad software design means and thinks that every UI/UX designer should be involved in software testing for a considerable period because it builds the foundation for understanding how end-users think and where they have problems learning and adapting new usage patterns.

Sean is often involved in designing and specifying software requirements. The method he uses is prototyping and what he calls GUI-Specification which is done in a way where the use-cases specified can be converted one-to-one into test cases. Or to put it in other words: “When the prototype is complete all test cases are also complete!”

As part of software design, Sean is passionate about Design Thinking workshops and has been training Design Thinking Moderators all over the world from Australia to South America. He is a conference speaker, published a book on Design Thinking Moderation, and shares his learnings in the “Billboard Design Thinking” LinkedIn Group with 2500+ members.

Speaker on “World Usability Congress 2021”
https://worldusabilitycongress.com/speaker/

Presentation Billboard Design Thinking how to start a workshop
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3PO9ZFVxD8

Invitation to online Virtual conference
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sean-mcguire-3a42803b_klaxoon-facilitation-facilitator-activity-6733443654897205248-KbpE/

Interview about Billboard Design Thinking
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkAJGhLF-Hw&list=PLM2Dd2NIn2CrDzz4qDEjT7oT8xDKmiYpP

Business of Software 2017 – 2018:
https://businessofsoftware.org/2017/09/design-origami-visual-mapping-user-experience/

Billboard Design Thinking LinkedIn Group
https://www.linkedin.com/groups/8780360/

Talk

Excellent Testing Starts With Excellent End-User Requirement Engineering and Specification

UI/UX Software Design is all about capturing end-user requirements to shape an application that brings value to business and end-users.

Using GUI-Specification (Graphical User Interface Specification) method is a new way of specifying software from a user interface perspective in a way that ensures end-users can visually test the application before the first line of code has been written.

The main idea is to test the prototype one-to-one, in the same manner, you would test the final decisions.

During and after development the GUI-Specification leads the development team with well-defined use-cases that are converted one-to-one into test cases that are used to test the application prior to going live.

The big advantage of this method is that:
1. End-users are able to test the prototyping before developers start their work.
2. End-users can confirm the solution is what they expect when delivered
3. Scope creep is prevented during development and testing
4. All test cases are completed before development starts

Using this design methodology means to design an application keeping the test perspective in mind from day one because testing will be the key metric to ensure the required quality is delivered before go-live. 

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