Empathy is your strength

About me

About me ๐Ÿ‘ง๐Ÿฝ

Born and raised in the Coachella Valley

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Huge Latino family

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Never got to visit Toys R Us

About me ๐Ÿ‘ฉ๐Ÿฝ

Live in the Bay Area

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Work as a developer

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Work on high-end laptop with high-speed Internet all the time

... kinda similar to most of Silicon Valley

Photo Credit: Guner Gulyesilย cc by-nc-2.0

Empathy is an important engineering value

As a developer, you have a lot of

technical decisions to make

Your parents don't care about

whitespace debates

Focus on how technical issues affect people

๐Ÿ‘จโ€๐Ÿ‘ฉโ€๐Ÿ‘งโ€๐Ÿ‘ฆ๐Ÿ‘ฉโ€๐Ÿ‘ฉโ€๐Ÿ‘งโ€๐Ÿ‘ฆ๐Ÿ‘จโ€๐Ÿ‘จโ€๐Ÿ‘ฆ

Think about people on slow Internet

Rural

No WiFi

Really slow mobile data

Some people rely on mobile, even when it's terrible.

We can write code to make it better for them.

#perfmatters

Think about people with poor vision

Poor vision runs in the family

  • Both parents work jobs where they're outside
  • Reading glasses aren't always on hand
  • Contrast can also be an issue where they miss icons

Accessibility guidelines allow them to do this

๐Ÿ‘‰๐Ÿฝ

Checkout WCAG to build for:

  • Screenreader access
  • Photosensitivity
  • Colorblindness
  • Subtitles / Audio
  • More

Empathy for your team means bringing this up nicely

How I advocate

  • I know my team mates
  • Bring facts, personas, or personal experiences
  • Do trainings to reach other teams
  • When it sucks, remember you're doing it for others

So how about you?

How to get a nutrition app to communities at risk for diabetes?

Encourage your team to do right by IE users and legacy devices

Include unit tests for cases like this

Your empathy will make you a better engineer

Thank you!

Questions/Comments

ย @kimberlymunoz

Empathy is your strength

By Kimberly Munoz

Empathy is your strength

A short presentation on how empathy for our communities makes us better developers.

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