Things I learnt from case study discussion

Well, this week lecture, Prof Ben invited his ex-student from previous batches of CS3216 to tell us about their projects. That was a great chance for us to discuss about User Interface + Interaction design and Team dynamics. There were many interesting things I learnt from the discussion. Let me tell you abt 3 of my most important things I learnt:
UI or UX :  In my previous post, I did give some of my thoughts about “Get help” case study. After listening to the people who actually develop that app,  I gained myself some experience. Although, I am not a good designer, to know more about how to design a good app is never useless. A pretty UI does not mean a good UX. Sometimes, your fancy graphics can hide the most important functions of your web pages. It does not mean that having awesome animations or mixing strong colors lead to a poor UX app, but you must always be careful. A good example of a well-known website with simple UI is google.com .
Another thing you should learn in order to improve your app’s UX is A/B testing (or split testing, bucket testing). I did know about it before but never applied it. A really good tool to help you do the A/B testing is Google Analytics (I know that Google Analytics is an awesome tool for web developing but I was surprised when I know that)
Never trust a programmer:
Not kidding! Why I say that when I am a coder? Because I work with other coders too and I know that sometimes I also did not deliver on time L . Good programmers want to try new things (new patterns, new platforms, new technologies.) And you can never know how hard things are until you try them. If you are a team leader, and one of your coder tell you :”I can finish this part in 3 days”. Ok, let pretend that you believe him and prepare plan B when 6 days later he is still working on it.
I usually do not make a fuss if my teammate cannot deliver as he/she promised. There are something called “other modules”. If he/she askes for help and I am able to, I will not refuse.
Idea first or team first?
Again, this seems to be a question with no clear answer. I can only say that it depends on lots of factors. It is rare to have all members in a team both work well together and like the same idea.  In my opinion, I think team is more important that ideas.