Here’s a thing to watch when giving software engineers instructions – they like to be COMFY.
They, or even we, have done an amazing job over 50 years of setting our profession up in such a way that every minute we’re sitting in front of a computer, we are in 100% comfort zone. It’s warm, it’s a nice Herman Miller Aeron chair, we’ve got a headphones on, there’s Netflix on one screen, freshly made coffee in the cup. It’s nice.
However, software, is used everywhere, and developers forget that. Developers forget that the parking app they’re building won’t be used in a nice warm office, but will be used at 5am in the rain and the dark in St Albans railway station, where the person using it can’t remember their password.
Or in a busy hospital ward at the end of an 18-hour shift and the nurse can’t go home until they’ve finished inputting their handover data.
Or in a KFC with 20 other delivery drivers, or looking up directions on the way to a court hearing. Like very UNCOMFORTABLE situations.
Make sure that you’re developers actually get out there and use what they’re building LIKE THE ACTUAL USERS will.