The Minimum Viable Product (MVP) term has outlived its usefulness. Since “MVP” was first popularized by Eric Reis’s book The Lean Startup in 2011, it’s become a catch-all term that means both far more and far less than it once did. Read more on Why it’s Time to Retire the Software MVP…
Evolving the Industry
Seven Influential and Inspirational Women in Tech
The topic of gender diversity in technology is becoming increasingly popular as the gender gap begins to close, but I find that people do not really understand why this diversity is important–or even more worrisome, how women can contribute to the advancement of technology. Read more on Seven Influential and Inspirational Women in Tech…
Using the Culture Cycle to Shape Your Company Culture
A few weeks ago, I wrote an introduction to the Culture Cycle, a model for understanding how culture changes over time. Today, I’d like to give two examples of the Culture Cycle in action, specifically in the workplace. Read more on Using the Culture Cycle to Shape Your Company Culture…
Resources for Middle School Girls to Learn Programming
While we were at the Junior Achievement Girls Dream Fair a few months ago, a middle school girl came up to our booth. She went carefully through a sheet of questions, writing down my answers word for word.
“Anything else you’re curious about?” I asked when she was done.
After a pause, she asked, “Is computer science hard?”
Read more on Resources for Middle School Girls to Learn Programming…
The Culture Cycle: A Model for Understanding Company Culture
As a recent college graduate, it’s been exciting to apply things I learned in school to real-world scenarios. Not all of those topics have been totally relevant, but a few have definitely stuck with me. One is called the Culture Cycle, which is used to model the evolution of cultural norms and practices within social groups. Read more on The Culture Cycle: A Model for Understanding Company Culture…
Coding Bootcamps Have a Fundamental Problem
One of the aspects of my role at Atomic Object involves hiring new employees. Throughout this process, I’ve come in contact with a lot of graduates from coding bootcamps across the United States. To date, none of these graduates have been a good fit for Atomic. This fact has led me to start formulating a theory: Coding bootcamps might have a fundamental problem. Read more on Coding Bootcamps Have a Fundamental Problem…
A Moral Justification for Diversity In Tech – Why “Good for Business” Isn’t Good Enough
This past weekend, a memo by a Google employee criticizing the company’s diversity goals and practices was leaked to the media. The memo presents sexist and thoroughly debunked views about women, and the ensuing conversation about diversity has been both heated and informative. I have found, however, that there’s something mostly missing from this conversation: a moral case for diversity.
Ask these Questions when Applying Machine Learning to People
The field of machine learning matured with applications like spam filtering, targeted advertising, self-driving cars, and weather predictions. As machine learning techniques are increasingly used to make predictions about people, there are a few machine learning ethics questions we need to be asking ourselves.
Read more on Ask these Questions when Applying Machine Learning to People…
Developing Accessible Software: Better Navigation with Skip Links
We’ve talked about how to start following the principles of accessibility. Now we’re going to dig into the nuts and bolts with a real-life example of one of the simplest ways to save time and tedium for users working with assistive technologies. Today, we’re talking about skip links.
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Designing Accessible Software – Breaking Down WCAG 2.0
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) offer a short list of focal areas for website design that can also be applied to software design in general. Here, I’ll break down the four categories of guidelines in WCAG 2.0 and offer some suggestions on how to plan for and evaluate them when designing software.
Read more on Designing Accessible Software – Breaking Down WCAG 2.0…