NOTE This file was generated by Descript 1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:01,590 Hi guys and welcome back. 2 00:00:01,590 --> 00:00:05,406 Every project needs users otherwise, why build it right? 3 00:00:05,736 --> 00:00:08,916 So in this video, let's take a look at what it means to become 4 00:00:08,916 --> 00:00:11,046 a user or to interact with users. 5 00:00:11,316 --> 00:00:12,786 What users normally want? 6 00:00:12,996 --> 00:00:16,836 What to do if other similar software to what you're building already exists? 7 00:00:16,880 --> 00:00:19,910 And I'll give you a few examples of how you can use what users 8 00:00:19,910 --> 00:00:22,460 tell you to plan your projects. 9 00:00:22,710 --> 00:00:24,930 Normally users will be part of your team. 10 00:00:25,175 --> 00:00:27,875 Usually in most teams, you have a person who is responsible 11 00:00:27,875 --> 00:00:29,644 for representing the users. 12 00:00:29,945 --> 00:00:33,175 Basically talking to them, understanding their wants and needs 13 00:00:33,355 --> 00:00:36,785 and communicating that to the team as well as normally planning the project. 14 00:00:36,991 --> 00:00:39,601 Maybe you're already the lucky position and you get to actually talk to your 15 00:00:39,601 --> 00:00:43,471 customers or your users often, but most people are not in that position. 16 00:00:44,071 --> 00:00:46,921 For our personal projects, like this one where we're going 17 00:00:46,921 --> 00:00:49,051 solo, we don't have users. 18 00:00:49,051 --> 00:00:53,721 We are the users so it's important to spend some time becoming a user. 19 00:00:53,721 --> 00:00:57,591 It's too easy for us developers to sit down and start worrying about 20 00:00:57,591 --> 00:01:00,231 how are we going to implement this or that, what database we're going to 21 00:01:00,231 --> 00:01:01,671 use, how are we going to code that? 22 00:01:02,081 --> 00:01:05,951 And forget about, you know, the reason why we are creating 23 00:01:05,951 --> 00:01:07,181 the project in the first place. 24 00:01:07,241 --> 00:01:08,891 And it's all too easy to do that. 25 00:01:08,921 --> 00:01:12,491 That's why I always recommend that every time you complete some 26 00:01:12,491 --> 00:01:13,781 functionality in your project. 27 00:01:13,991 --> 00:01:14,681 You sit down. 28 00:01:14,861 --> 00:01:17,621 You think about what you've accomplished so far and you 29 00:01:17,621 --> 00:01:19,211 plan your next steps as well. 30 00:01:19,536 --> 00:01:24,306 In the last lecture, I showed you the process that teams normally use for 31 00:01:24,346 --> 00:01:28,566 doing that, which is planning and then implementing, and then reviewing, quite 32 00:01:28,566 --> 00:01:30,156 frequently every two to three weeks. 33 00:01:30,246 --> 00:01:33,246 So I recommend you do something like that in your personal projects as well. 34 00:01:33,496 --> 00:01:36,646 When I was thinking about this project, I realised I wanted to be able to keep 35 00:01:36,646 --> 00:01:39,436 track of small notes or journal entries. 36 00:01:39,796 --> 00:01:43,066 I also want it to be able to view past entries, to know what I have 37 00:01:43,066 --> 00:01:44,806 been up to earlier on in time. 38 00:01:45,076 --> 00:01:48,856 And I wanted an easy way to access this using a website. 39 00:01:48,856 --> 00:01:49,876 I know that's not much. 40 00:01:49,906 --> 00:01:53,536 It's not a lot of stuff to get started on with a project, but I promise you 41 00:01:53,536 --> 00:01:58,039 that as we implement these features, we're going to come up with more things. 42 00:01:58,190 --> 00:02:02,930 Inspiration isn't a matter of, you know, a sudden lightning strike is more of a 43 00:02:02,930 --> 00:02:06,890 continuous process where you sit down, you think about what you've done so far, 44 00:02:07,039 --> 00:02:08,600 and you think about what you can do next. 45 00:02:08,690 --> 00:02:11,930 So take your time, become a user and think about how your 46 00:02:11,930 --> 00:02:13,460 project is going to develop. 47 00:02:13,893 --> 00:02:18,113 It's important to note that users are not going to jump into, create my own 48 00:02:18,143 --> 00:02:23,333 app for this, if a competitor already exists that does everything they need. 49 00:02:23,728 --> 00:02:27,078 So it's very important for you whenever you're starting a project, be that a 50 00:02:27,078 --> 00:02:31,368 personal project or a enterprise project that you research your competitors. 51 00:02:31,368 --> 00:02:32,568 You see what they do. 52 00:02:32,568 --> 00:02:33,468 What they do well. 53 00:02:33,498 --> 00:02:34,878 Maybe what they don't do so well. 54 00:02:35,118 --> 00:02:37,308 What features they've got and which ones they're missing. 55 00:02:37,668 --> 00:02:40,098 Through this, you'll be able to find two things. 56 00:02:40,278 --> 00:02:44,873 The first one is, maybe a competitor exists that does things very well 57 00:02:44,873 --> 00:02:47,963 and it does everything that you can think of that you could possibly need. 58 00:02:48,443 --> 00:02:51,773 In that case, you might be in a little bit of trouble in terms of the project. 59 00:02:51,833 --> 00:02:53,663 Maybe you only need to implement it after all. 60 00:02:54,143 --> 00:02:58,283 But more often than not, in fact, I'm confident in 99% of the time, you're 61 00:02:58,283 --> 00:03:01,298 going to find other people have done similar projects but they just don't 62 00:03:01,298 --> 00:03:04,948 have the feature you're looking for, or maybe the product just isn't that good. 63 00:03:05,098 --> 00:03:05,628 In that case. 64 00:03:05,988 --> 00:03:06,518 Go for it! 65 00:03:06,618 --> 00:03:07,668 Remake the project. 66 00:03:07,668 --> 00:03:08,388 Make it better. 67 00:03:08,568 --> 00:03:09,438 Add more features. 68 00:03:09,438 --> 00:03:12,078 Do the thing that you want to use as a user. 69 00:03:12,108 --> 00:03:14,478 That's what users are normally looking for. 70 00:03:14,478 --> 00:03:18,608 At this stage though we're still learning so it's always worth implementing 71 00:03:18,608 --> 00:03:21,188 things, even if they're similar to something that's been implemented before. 72 00:03:21,688 --> 00:03:26,518 It's also worth remembering that a lot of startups begin as competitors 73 00:03:26,518 --> 00:03:28,468 to projects that already exist. 74 00:03:28,558 --> 00:03:30,028 They just do them better. 75 00:03:30,418 --> 00:03:35,008 For example, Slack was an improvement over IRC and Discord was seen 76 00:03:35,008 --> 00:03:35,968 as an improvement over Slack. 77 00:03:35,998 --> 00:03:37,138 They have different features. 78 00:03:37,138 --> 00:03:38,458 They do things slightly differently. 79 00:03:38,738 --> 00:03:43,208 Cater for different audiences but overall, the core technologies are the same. 80 00:03:43,708 --> 00:03:46,588 So now let's say you have become a user. 81 00:03:46,588 --> 00:03:48,238 You thought about what you want for a bit. 82 00:03:48,658 --> 00:03:51,448 You've researched your competitors and you see what they can do. 83 00:03:51,748 --> 00:03:56,368 Now, it's time to start planning what you will actually do in your project. 84 00:03:56,871 --> 00:04:01,521 And the outcome of this should be what you as a user wants or what your users 85 00:04:01,521 --> 00:04:02,931 would want and descriptions of that. 86 00:04:03,441 --> 00:04:07,071 So I like writing these in the form of user stories like this one. 87 00:04:07,251 --> 00:04:10,461 As a user, I would like to be able to add new journal entries 88 00:04:10,581 --> 00:04:13,101 so that I can keep track of my programming learning over time. 89 00:04:13,656 --> 00:04:18,336 This is a user story that's very specific to me why I want this journal app. 90 00:04:18,786 --> 00:04:21,156 Some users might not want to keep track of the programming learning 91 00:04:21,156 --> 00:04:24,066 for example, but that's irrelevant because I'm building this project 92 00:04:24,066 --> 00:04:26,046 for a specific user, which is me. 93 00:04:26,546 --> 00:04:27,416 Another user story. 94 00:04:27,656 --> 00:04:30,656 As a user, I would like to be able to easily see past journal 95 00:04:30,656 --> 00:04:33,356 entries in a simple way so that I can remember what I've learned. 96 00:04:33,856 --> 00:04:36,226 And finally, as a user, I would like to be able to access my 97 00:04:36,226 --> 00:04:39,826 journal using a website, so that I can do so from any of my devices. 98 00:04:40,326 --> 00:04:43,386 It's important when you're writing user stories that they look as though they're 99 00:04:43,396 --> 00:04:47,326 written by users and they normally contain what you want to implement 100 00:04:47,506 --> 00:04:49,276 and a why you want to implement it. 101 00:04:49,786 --> 00:04:53,716 That way, whenever you read the user story, you can remember how it came to be. 102 00:04:54,256 --> 00:04:57,276 But it's important that user stories don't will contain a how. 103 00:04:57,426 --> 00:04:58,956 How something is going be implemented. 104 00:04:58,956 --> 00:05:01,596 What technologies you're going to use or what code you're going to write 105 00:05:01,866 --> 00:05:03,726 because that can be too prescriptive. 106 00:05:04,066 --> 00:05:08,776 User stories are more reminders for you to have a conversation later on, either 107 00:05:08,776 --> 00:05:11,956 with yourself if you're coding on your own or maybe with your user or with other 108 00:05:11,956 --> 00:05:13,756 team members if you're working in a team. 109 00:05:14,236 --> 00:05:18,676 By having those conversations later on, you can flesh out more details rather 110 00:05:18,676 --> 00:05:22,046 than trying to write them initially in the first user story you come up with. 111 00:05:22,546 --> 00:05:23,446 However with that said. 112 00:05:23,476 --> 00:05:27,496 A development team or yourself does need to keep track of how you're 113 00:05:27,496 --> 00:05:28,336 going to implement something. 114 00:05:28,336 --> 00:05:29,476 That's unavoidable. 115 00:05:29,506 --> 00:05:30,736 It is our job after all. 116 00:05:31,006 --> 00:05:35,206 So when we create these user stories in a tool that we use to keep track 117 00:05:35,206 --> 00:05:39,606 of user stories, we can of course add more detail, write there how we intend 118 00:05:39,606 --> 00:05:43,546 to implement it, and then come back to it and review that later on when we do 119 00:05:43,546 --> 00:05:45,976 start work on any particular user story. 120 00:05:46,946 --> 00:05:48,721 Alright, thank you guys for joining me in this video. 121 00:05:48,871 --> 00:05:50,101 I'll see you in the next one.