I believe in the power of software as a tool for social change. But apps won’t change the world. People will.
In this session, you'll hear a global software delivery story about how we used agile principles and practices to build Amnesty International an app in India and conduct user research in Kenya. My report is a multi-stakeholder story about crafting strategies based on human empathy and understanding. I'll be sharing how techniques like customer journey mapping, user-test driven development and continuous design helped us investigate an ill-defined problem and posit the simplest solution. I’ll be focusing on the human factors techniques we used to understand human rights activists’ needs, and elaborate how this agile approach is valuable when thinking about creating tools that need to scale. Everyone can gain insight from the unique challenges that the non-profit, NGO, and social enterprise space faces. Attendees will learn how these project's insights can be applied to any sort of product development, and how anyone can use these sort of design insights in a project lifecycle.
We'll then focus on outcomes over outputs in an interactive workshop at the intersection of user experience and business strategy. My aim is to equip participants with practical takeaways to tackle their projects differently. We will talk about a wicked problem using a design thinking approach, and see how it integrates with agile software development methodologies.
This is an opportunity to move your good idea forward and have some fun with agile. Think of it like Lean Startup Machine for social design - in 55 minutes or less. The focus is to see how we can find a viable idea through gamestorming and similar activities, then how we'd funnel that into generative user research for next-step validation and lo-fi prototyping.
Participants will learn challenges faced when trying to kickstart an innovation strategy globally, and how to adapt a process from discovery to development that allows you to analyse a problem and fit the answer to the context.