Name: Video recording for Building software from scratch, the user-centric approach - Codementor Events
Uploaded: 2021-11-25
Description: Veerle, entrepreneur and data scientist, will share the process of getting to know users' needs, shaping and validating ideas using wireframes, and further iterating and optimizing features in user-centric software.

Veerle, entrepreneur and data scientist, will share the process of getting to know users' needs, shaping and validating ideas using wireframes, and further iterating and optimizing features in user-centric software.


## About the talk

As a developer, you are most likely able to build some sort of software. However, building software isn’t enough if you want the software to be meaningful and helpful to the end-user. Before you even start to think about implementation, you should start with your users' needs first.

### This talk will cover

The steps to building the right software for your users:

- The initial process of getting to know your users' needs
- Shaping and validating your ideas using wireframes
- Iterating, adding, and optimizing features based on user feedback



Programming & Development

### Why do we need a software development process?
You need a process to help you align expectations between developers or your team members and your stakeholders or your users. It also helps you with formalizing how you should deal with new requests, with bugs, or with new tasks. And if you have a process or a plan then this will prevent unnecessary rework in the end. Besides that, it helps you stay within budget and obviously having a process helps with building your plan.


### Why should a developer care about process or user experience?
Depending on the context, you as a developer might actually be involved in all parts of the process. So you can be a developer who’s part of an agile team of 30 developers, a couple of UX designers, and dozens of product managers, but then if you’re in a small company, a small startup, you’ll be closer to the user. As a dev, depending on the business you’re in, you might be involved in different parts of the process. An understanding of the process allows you to understand why decisions are made or why they pivot. 


### Is being agile also being user-centric?
If you look at the two philosophies, then you will see in agile methodology there is a focus on quickly releasing stuff, making sure that you satisfy the customers, and in user-centric design (UCD) an equivalent of that would be, we need to create or think about our end users, and we need to make sure that they have the best experience as possible when using our product. I think if you can combine the two methodologies, that’s cool. You don’t need to see them as fixed. If agile methods prescribes you to do step one, two, and three, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to follow it 100% in full detail. It’s the same for user centered design (UCD), you can follow the steps in full detail, but it doesn’t help. It’s more about the thinking behind it and the only thing that the agile methodology wants is to make sure that you are close to your user, close to reality, by having these short cycles and constantly asking for feedback, essentially allowing you to conduct user research and write better user stories. This way you'll constantly deliver work that is close to the users' needs.

Video recording for: Building software from scratch, the user-centric approach

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