#BuildingHellocare — Lessons Learnt From Usable Lagos
Few years from now when we look back at the first version of Hellocare — that we successfully demoed at Usable Lagos — we hope to be embarrassed.
Right now, we are not even close to being embarrassed, we feel excited and proud — like a Nigerian father with plenty successful children.
There Is No Greater Agony Than Bearing An Unexpressed Concept Inside You
Having what you think is a great idea is like being pregnant with possibilities carrying them everywhere you go. Everywhere you look, you see what might be if you worked on your idea. Sketch after sketch, we tried to express our ideas, it was pure agony, until ‘Wale and Kayode came along and brought them to life. Kayode created the user interface, revealing how it would look like, then ‘Wale breathed life upon the designs and made the engines run.
Design after design, code after code, update after update, we pushed iteration after iteration and killed bugs and their families — heck some of those things have nine lives!
Out Of Our Minds And Into The Real World
So, we have a working prototype, what next? User testing baby! Usable Lagos was the best place to start. For us this was nothing scary, we looked forward to it. Pretty much everyone else had told us we were building a remarkable product; the whole idea was to get feedback from potential users and help us unveil any blind spots. I anticipated it will be awesome… And it was. The audience was great, their feedback was enlightening. We were live on Facebook!
Lessons Learnt
Make assumptions, but don’t bet on them anything you are not willing to lose, like your left arm.
The user only knows what you show them. They don’t know what is inside your head.
An ounce of user testing is worth a tonne of updates.
It’s user feedback not project defense — so calm down, don’t tight things to your chest.
If anything will go wrong, it wil… scratch that. Something will definitely go wrong, be prepared. Trust the internet to go out at those definitive moments!
Meat Pie And Drinks And Some Networking On The Rooftop.
Meat pie and drinks on the roof top and a chance to meet and discuss with other Usable Attendees? Awesome! I met the soon-to-be-famous Gregory Onyeahialam. Passionate somebody. And we received insights on how to craft better user interface design from Komeh. Great guy!
Thanks to the amazing people of Usable Lagos for the feedback and kind words. They mean a lot to us. We look forward to presenting a refreshed version of HelloCare in the near future.
