What Raising 3 Kids Taught Me About Working With Users

No matter the size of your team most of us developers work with users or stakeholders to develop project requirements. Making your way through competing requests to get to a good design takes a lot of time and skill. In this talk Derek will use what he has learned as a parent and humorously apply it to product design and requirement gathering. You will learn about effective methods for getting agreement on product features and interface design. You will learn about ways of discovering what stakeholders really need to ensure delivery of a great product. These are valuable skills that can help you create better applications, become more valuable to your team, and advance your career. You might even pick up a parenting tip or two.

Transcript

1. What Raising 3 Kids Taught Me About Working with Users @DerekB_WI binkleyd@yahoo.com
2. About Me • Father of 3 • Volunteer at Community Justice • Senior Engineer, TurnTo Networks • Home Pizza Chef
6. Customer Generated Content
7. 17yo, 9yo, 14yo
8. Introduction
9. Who are your users? • Not us. • Project Stakeholders • Target Audience of Business • Company Employees • Clients
10. Communication Needs • Requirements • Usability • Successful Product Launch • Understand the Whys
11. I don’t like quiche!
12. Importance of Understanding • Oh! That’s what you meant. • Shared Glossary • Understandable Milestones
13. Shared Experience • 105 Billion People Have Lived on Earth 1 • 1.7 Billion Websites 2 • Over 1 Million Apps in App Store 3 1 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16870579 2 https://news.netcraft.com/archives/category/web-server-survey/ 3 https://www.theverge.com/2013/10/22/4866302/apple-announces-1-million-apps-in-the-app-store
14. Everybody is Special • We are special to our family, friends, colleagues, etc. • Your project is special to those involved.
15. Setting Boundaries Always saying yes, “fosters a sense of deficiency that can never be fully satisfied.” 1 1 https://nyti.ms/2qruRKL
16. Setting Boundaries • MSCW – Must, Should, Could, Want • Grooming the Backlog • Sprint Planning/Review • Limiting Distractions • Users shouldn’t need to know technology.
17. Fair !== Equal • Substantive Fairness • Procedural Fairness • Fair Notice • Impartiality • Fact-gathering • Fair Hearing (being heard) http://www.boystown.org/parenting/article/Pages/fairness.aspx?/article/ fairness http://www.dailylocal.com/article/DL/20141215/NEWS/141219891
18. There are no stupid questions
19. There are no stupid questions • Are we there yet?
20. Actual Destination v Perceived Destination
21. There are no stupid questions • Are we there yet? • Are we there yet? • Are we there yet? • Are we there yet? • Are we there yet? • Are we there yet? • Are we there yet? • Are we there yet?
22. Help Users Focus on Progress • Product Backlog • Sprint Planning/Review • Burn-down/Burn-up Chart • Kanban Board • Product Roadmap • MVP
24. Keep it Simple
26. Boy Bands
27. • "[I want to] clarify some of what I was trying to explain at today’s meeting. Since I don’t have a technical background, it doesn’t always make it from my brain to my mouth in one piece while under pressure." - project stakeholder Technology can intimidate and exclude
28. Things Change Quickly
29. “I don’t like it when things change.” 
 Sammy, age 7 Things Change Quickly
30. Don’t Underestimate the Effect of Change on your users. Things Change Quickly
31. Help users understand value of change. Things Change Quickly
32. Unexpected Behavior
33. Unexpected Behavior
34. Unexpected Behavior • User Acceptance Testing • Find good user base
35. Putting Kids to Work • https://qz.com/703049/teens-summer-jobs- unglamorous/ • https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/ blog/2013/11/21/importance-youth-jobs- way-more-paycheck • https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/ articles/PMC2936460/
36. User Involvement • Giving acheivable tasks to users • Working together towards a shared goal
40. Thanks - Bedankt - Merci • @DerekB_WI • https://joind.in/talk/25d2b