LECTURE TRANSCRIPT GIVEN BY PROF. J HUCKVALE TO HIS SOFTWARE ENGINEERING STUDENTS AT UVU CS DEPT - DELIVERED FEB 16 2024

Last night William (REDACTED) posed a question about how the workout app presented by Group 6 added value or new features to what is already available on the market. How is it useful, and why would people download and use your app compared to what other apps are available?

When it comes to project initiation, this is where you separate yourself from other developers based on your capacity to gather the data and understand the products available and the people who use them. Here's a secret from someone who is a project initiation guy - empathy and inclusivity for unique needs and cultures and identities that fall outside the norm. When you make products that are targeted for mainstream consumption, it opens up a variety of opportunities for those who have been excluded.

Once you've identified these end-users, your task is to learn everything about them. Understand them, their persona, their archetype, their culture, their demographic, and their unique needs. Gather data on what they want and what they prefer and what they value - especially in a user experience.

If you consider designing software for, say, computer science students or software engineers who likely spend more time energy in the mental-thinking realm and exhausting themselves via logical activities instead of physical ones. Imagine an app that immediately feels like it was made for you and your peers. Think of what features you might develop that most CS types would identify with and connect with because it speaks their language, makes them feel included, understood, respected, and cared about. Imagine an app that had really cool data analysis features and report generators along with scheduling functions that automatically considered the work we do and built something around that. What would that look and feel like?

I know for me I don't like feeling like the exercise apps I might use are intended for and created by (stereotype warning) hyper masculine super alpha macho summer sales bros. To pick up an app and feel like it was created for me and designed by people like me who also spend more time in the mental realm and have struggled with being more physically active - I wouldn't care so much about the aesthetics, depth, design, or anything else.

And I think that's the point - understanding how inclusive design towards a specific culture/target market/user/etc allows you to spend more time making it useful for them, and less time worrying about having the best user interface, AI features, cutting edge this or that. Make it for them and you can get away with more simplistic features, designs, and functionality.

Think of Skibidi Toilet - it's a phenomenon in how popular and how rapidly it's taken over a variety of platforms viewership. Why? It knows it's target audience - it knows Generation Alpha.

It understands their psychology and developmental trends at an unconscious level. Does it have the best graphics, production quality, or really the best of anything? No. Not even close. But it knows it's users/viewers and it was designed to be inclusive of a demographic who was starving for content made specifically with them in mind.

I challenge all of you to ask yourselves who your app is made for and how well you know those people and how much your app/software satisfies needs for that specific end user because it is inclusive of them where other developers have not considered their needs and as a result they feel left out. Do you really understand your end-user? Does your app act as a medium that conveys the message that "I understand you - look what I made for you"?

This is a powerful and useful tip for all of you to consider.

Empathy in software design that cultivates inclusivity is an emerging generational value that is almost universal amongst Millennials/Gen-Z.

Or in other words....When you think of empathy and inclusivity - think of a Toilet.

...

A Skibidi Toilet.