10/26/2016 4:00pm BY YIN YIN LOW

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Objective: The purpose of this interview with Miss Laurie Zhang is to understand the real-world software development environment, learn about who and how the players play their roles in the software operation as a team and have her suggestions to improve our project from the technical perspective.

 

Miss Laurie Zhang is a professional software engineer in the Facebook Advertising Team. She, the alumni '15 of University of Washington, really helpful to share her experience working with a team. Through our one-hour-and-a-half interview, she expresses her keen insights on our IKnowMee Project: tech features refine with the customer-first approach; diverse personalities mean successful teams; be bold and limitless in pitching the entrepreneurial idea.

 

1. Improve IKnowMee Project's tech features with customer-first approach

 

First and foremost, IKnowMee Project is to solve the problem of lack of self-awareness through visualization of self-measurement. The self-measurement has to do with the user’s time on the internet and the content the user engages. Creating software that tracks digital footprints of our daily life is a leading-edge idea that will be prominent in the future. "More than 3 billion people are now using the Internet. Internet users are becoming more aware of their digital footprint; 47% have searched for information about themselves online, up from just 22% five years ago,"  stated by Laurie. I believe our project will ignite another evolution in the age of Web 2.0, only if we have comprehensive tech features that suit our selected customer range. She mentioned about doing an in-depth market research of targeted customer offers the opportunity to capture rich, descriptive data about people’s behaviors, attitudes and perceptions, and unfolding complexity. In my opinion, IKnowMee Project's tech features incorporate the data collected through market research will be customer-oriented. So, our customers will be likely to use the software on a long-term,  daily basis and not just temporary-interested.

 

2. Diverse personalities mean successful teams

 

Besides, Laurie sheds light on creating a diverse team and boosting project diversity to achieve success in real-life software development. The success of a collaborative team in creating today’s increasingly complex technological devices depends not only on the combined skill sets of the team members but also on their personalities and ways of approaching and solving problems. I agree with her that diversity in the workplace can improve understanding of the marketplace, enhance creativity and problem-solving ability in teams, and better use of talent. Laurie explained that in a real-world software development team, the key players of the team are Head of Development (HoD), Analysts, Designers/Developers and Testers. She also suggested that a startup software development company like our IKnowMee Project will consist of designers, computer architects/programmers and operators. Inevitably, I think even though it will take longer for such psychologically diverse teams to achieve excellent cooperation. We must first cultivate an openness to opposing opinions and recognize the value of exploring a problem from various angles.It is powerful when people come together over a common objective.

 

3. Be bold and limitless in pitching the entrepreneurial idea

 

"Seattle is a city of innovation and endless opportunities," quoted by Laurie. Everything is possible. Inevitably, we have to find an innovative way to reach out our ideal customer in this fast-paced 21-st century. Our Marketing-Mix Strategy must be carried out in the most efficient, comprehensible way possible. She recommends the revolutionary word of mouth marketing method through the Internet - Search Engine Optimization that we never think of previously. If we do great work with SEO, it could mean a significant amount of revenue for our business. On the other hand, it is also an ongoing initiative. Once we generate a steady stream of traffic from SEO, we need to constantly be maintaining and improving SEO to keep those rankings that worked so hard for.

 

"Technology is reinventing the way we think about and interact with the world around us.” In conclusion, I appreciate the meet up with Miss Laurie. It was truly inspiring and eye-opening to learn about the software development in reality. After interviewing Miss Laurie, I realized that implementing the collaboration of advanced and efficient software features with clear marketing strategies with targeted customer will undoubtedly enhance our IKnowMee Project. We need to embrace diversity while maintaining unity by working together toward common goals for this project.