# Human-centered Software Development

DevFeed: [Human-centered Software Development](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/human-centered-software-development-24576.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://medium.com/headspace-engineering/human-centered-software-development-3b0aa77f8897?source=rss-3da90e297190------2>)

Author: Headspace

Published: 2021-05-27T20:52:21Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Stories by Headspace on Medium](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/stories-by-headspace-on-medium.md>)

Topics: [Development](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/development.md>), [User Experience](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/user-experience.md>), [Software Engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/software-engineering.md>), [interfaces](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/interfaces.md>), [Code](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/code.md>), [App](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/app.md>)

Tags: [developers](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/developers.md>), [development](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/development.md>), [end-user-experience](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/end-user-experience.md>), [engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/engineering.md>), [experience-design](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/experience-design.md>), [interfaces](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/interfaces.md>), [software](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/software.md>), [software-development](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/software-development.md>), [software-engineer](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/software-engineer.md>), [user-experience](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/user-experience.md>), [user-experience-design](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/user-experience-design.md>)

## AI overview

The article argues that software development should be human-centered because developers are users of the code and systems they build. It applies user-experience principles to the development process, emphasizing code readability, maintainability, and attention to engineers' human factors.

## Source excerpt

Build stronger software by designing for human interaction Author: Edward Park, Senior Software Engineer Creating software is a human-centered endeavor. The software that we build is used directly by human users. Whether we're building a mobile application, service, or tool, the cumulative moments of delight (or abhorrence) that our human users experience determine the efficacy of the software we build. For this reason, software organizations invest in user experience design, in addition to the nuts-and-bolts of the technology under the hood. Product designers leverage their expertise in interaction psychology to create user flows that are useful, familiar, and discoverable. Designers understand that application interfaces are only as effective as their users find them to be useful. Therefore, the best user experiences incorporate visual components that facilitate task completion while working with the psychological heuristics that humans intuitively employ. Humans seek sensory cues and constraints to navigate a deluge of stimuli and process large amounts of information, and we do so while interacting with computing interfaces as well as the real world. In essence, software organizations are constantly trying to optimize how humans interact with computers. Today, the practice of using design to hone user experience is predominantly applied to visual interfaces. These are commonly the front ends of applications, where humans interact with the visually rendered software (in a browser or mobile app). What about the act of software development itself? OUR FELLOW DEVELOPERS ARE USERS, TOO Most observers would think that software development strives to translate human instructions into machine-understandable directives in a reductive, one-way communication flow. We are "programming" computers to do our bidding, and we do so with cold, logical artifacts composed of code modules. While the software itself is mostly evaluated against human experiences, we compartmentalize th