Design Driven Development for the Win

We were so excited to see the interest and engagement from all those in the design community who came out for the Design Week event we hosted. We started the evening with an Open House and met some incredible folks with backgrounds in Agile, UX, UI, and more. Then our CEO, Marty Nelson, gave a presentation on Design Driven Development. His focus was on creating software that has great design and functional usability. He also drove home the importance of making design a prioritized, discrete step in your development process. This will both align the project to doing the right thing, while accelerating overall time to delivery by avoiding rework. You'll hit the mark and impress your customer or client by focusing on the user experience first instead of letting it linger as an afterthought.

Alchemy implements Design Driven Development in App Lab, which is our consultancy designed to build apps affordably for Portland’s aspiring entrepreneurs and startups. Graduates of our professional software development program build the apps under the guidance of senior software developers. When discussing projects with potential new clients, we’re always trying to understand what the problem is they are trying to solve and looking to help the client articulate the simplest happy story possible to get them to a MVP and bring their idea to fruition. Having launched several successful apps, this process has proven successful and will make us even more efficient for future clients.

You can watch Marty’s entire presentation here, and look through the presentation here. If you have any questions about App Lab, reach out to Shannon, our Marketing and Career Services Director. If you’d like to learn to code and become a software developer, and find out more about our professional, FullStack JavaScript development program, reach out to our School Director, Megan. Additionally, we hold an Open House every Thursday at 12:30PM for anyone interested in taking our program. The next cohort starts in June. Apply now! (It doesn’t commit you to taking the program, but gets you started in securing your spot.)