ARMAN HEZARKHANI: Hi, everyone.
I'm Ahmad Hezarkhani, and in this video,
we'll go through the workflow of building
a hypothetical solution for the Google Developer Student Clubs
Solution Challenge.
In the previous video, we explored the United Nations 17
Sustainable Development Goals and brainstormed
some simple solutions we could build.
In this video, we're going to pick one of the sample
solutions, and together we'll quickly
walk through the journey to building a successful demo.
One of the ideas we came up with in the previous video
was to develop an elderly-friendly education
platform solving for the Sustainable Development Goal
number four, quality education.
So first I'll share my initial thoughts
with my Google Developer Student clubs members.
I'll introduce myself and my strengths,
and I'll highlight what types of talents and experience
I'm looking for in my prospective team members.
For example, let's say I have solid UI/UX abilities,
but I need help when building the server
side of my application, and I definitely
need help leading the team and managing the project.
Once I meet with the potential team members and some of us
decide to join forces, it's time to do a design sprint.
We do this in order to properly define the problem
and then come up with possible solutions.
For detailed instructions on this step,
check out this video series.
Once we're done with our design sprint,
let's assume we have defined the problem as, mobile apps can
be too complicated for the elderly,
and the buttons are too small.
And elderly users sometimes find the discovery stage
too complicated or find the course tutor style
to be too millennial oriented or fast.
Also, during the design sprint we define the solution as, one,
build a platform that supports the niche
market of elderly education.
Two, the client app should be simple to navigate
and has minimal distractions, like notifications or ads,
and three, course providers can produce content
specifically designed for the elderly, possibly
by the elderly, thus providing a revenue stream to a usually
underserved demographic.
Once we've confirmed it with some potential users,
it's time to start designing the user interface.
We'll share this load between the team members,
but I'll offer to take the lead since I
believe I'm good at UX and UI.
I'll share my workflow and designs,
and the team will go through a few hours
of feedback and revisions.
This stage can take a day or it can take a week.
Don't rush to implement the solution before you're
confident you've designed a workflow and functionality that
solves the problem you have defined.
In our design, there are three user types.
The learner, the helper, and the teacher.
And my team members are confident we're
catering for all user types in the best way
considering our specific market.
So it's time to design the technology.
We've decided to build a progressive web app instead
of spending time building both a website and a native Android
app.
We decided to use Firebase at the back end
to serve the course content to our users.
At this stage, we'll probably share our thoughts
with our teacher or with the DSC lead and ask for their advice
on our designs and technology decisions.
We'll also ask the DSC lead what workshops we should attend
or what code labs we should complete, all in order
to be ready for the tasks at hand.
Bear in mind this is just a quick walkthrough of the stage,
so be sure to check out my videos on designing
the technology or the many resources
we have on the website.
Next, we will spend the time to build our solution.
On our team, we have a couple of members
who build the progressive web app
and a couple of members who build the server
side, front end and back end.
You might separate the tasks differently,
or you might have less team members.
Whatever works for you and your team is fair game.
Once we have a beta version we'll
go through some user testing, and we'll get feedback.
We'll iterate over our code, and we'll remove any bugs
that we find on the platform.
Now that we're close to a great working
version of our solution, one or two of our team members
will start researching pitching strategies
and how we should present our solution in a demo.
We'll record a video demo of our app,
and finally, we'll warm up our acting chops
and prepare an awesome demo, which
will inspire people to use or recommend
our app to the prospective demographic of users.
And that's it.
Wow.
That was two to three months of effort
compressed into three minutes.
Obviously, I'm not suggesting that it'll
be this easy or super quick to come up with a winning
solution, but if you're passionate about your problem
and your solution and if you use resources provided,
such as workshops, hackathons, code labs,
you'll have a high chance of developing a solution you
will be very, very proud of.
So good luck to all of you.
Use the resources, and we can't wait
to see the awesome solutions you'll come up with.
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