Build an App That Matters for User
As a software engineer, we are encouraged to build codes that is functional and readable by humans. Beside of all technical things that ensures an app run smoothly, there is another thing that is much more important: User Centered Design.
User Centered Design — Build App That Matters
When building an app, the most fundamental thing to consider is to build an app that is useful for users. It will be nonsense if we’ve built a scalable app running on cloud platform that ready to serve thousand of requests per second… but no one used our well designed app.
In Sikepa development, we’re trying to build a solution that helps people to get some benefit from our application. That solution can be in form of business process automation, data insight clarity, etc. To ensure that the solution is really useful, we utilize a cyclic process of evaluation to measure the usability level of application.
Process #1: Defining Contexts
In the very beginning, we are defining some subjects that hopefully will use the application. This kind of activity is called as “defining user persona”. We decided that there will be 2 personas, Lecturer and Student
With persona, we are defining a clear definition of the users, their current frustrations, and what kind of goal they want to achieve by using our application. Creating persona makes it easier for team to list all solutions that can be implemented in the system, although we still don’t have any clear definition on how should the solution implemented in the system. But at least this process will make our brainstorming session easier and more importantly — useful for users
Process #2: Design Solutions
After some solution backlog has been defined, development team start to develop the application. To ensure that the implemented features will be useful to user, team always defined some acceptance criteria on every deliverables. This criteria clearly defines the implementation scope and what user can do within the application.
By defining acceptance criteria, project management team can define the tasks needed to be done by developers. This criteria also ensures that the app will be usable by users when the features are ready to use.
Process #3: Evaluation
After the features have been implemented, we need to ask for feedback from users to ensure that the developed features really help users to achieve their goal and overcome their frustrations. This kind of process is called as user testing. During the second Sprint Review, the development team presents the implemented feature to users to see if the features already useful for them. During this session, we find out that the implemented features are helpful, but there are some features that is needed to fully integrate the automation process. As an outcome from the user evaluation stage, team will decide if there will be another product backlog that will be developed to improve the user experience. Then the overall cyclical process will be done again with one goal — to ensure that user is satisfied when using our application.
When utilizing these processes on our software development process, we will ensure that the delivered features will be useful for users and help them to tackle their problems.
Thank you for reading this blog and see you in another PPL blog series!
