Design Thinking appeared back in the 60s of the last century at Stanford University, when a group of scientists led by Robert McNamara created an interdisciplinary Design Thinking course aimed at solving human problems. The course was based on the ideas of the American psychologist Abraham Maslow, who developed the theory of human needs and his approaches to self-realization.
Human-centered design is one of the key components of design thinking. The basis of design thinking is a creative process in which designers, developers, and other professionals work together to create innovative solutions to various problems and challenges. This approach arose from the need to solve complex problems and unforeseen situations that arise in various industries.
In 2005, IDEO, an innovative design agency, introduced its approach to problem solving called Human-centered design. This approach is based on a focus on users, their needs, problems, and requirements.
Over time, HCD has become increasingly popular and is used in various industries, including business, medicine, education, etc. Today, design thinking and Human-centered design are considered essential for creating innovative and successful products and services.
It has especially gained popularity in the recent crisis years, when companies realized that innovation and creating products that meet user needs are key success factors.
Well-known examples of companies that use design thinking in their work are Apple, Google, IBM, Airbnb, Zoom, and others.
Difficult times, such as the covid pandemic, were the time when companies could really demonstrate their ability to adapt to force majeure. Design thinking and Human-centered design, which focus on the needs of users, have become indispensable tools for companies to successfully adapt to new realities.
One of the most successful examples of design thinking during the covid pandemic is Zoom. It became very popular among users who were forced to work from home. To ensure maximum user comfort during video communication, Zoom actively used design thinking to optimize its platform.
Another successful example is UberEATS. When restaurants were forced to close their doors due to quarantine restrictions, UberEATS used design thinking to expand its network of partners and provide safe food delivery without having to leave home.
Other companies that have successfully applied design thinking during the covid pandemic include Instacart, Netflix, Headspace, and Peloton. They are using this method to adapt to changes in user behavior and provide safe and efficient access to their products and services.
In this challenging time, when users are forced to adapt to new conditions, companies that use design thinking can ensure optimal interaction with their users.
Let's move from theory to practice and see how development is carried out taking into account the principles of design thinking. This process is divided into certain stages. There are five of them. We'll take a look at each one.
This is the stage in which the design team seeks to understand and hear the needs of users by immersing themselves in their world and exploring their problems, wishes, and desires. The design team tries to understand their needs and perspectives from their point of view in order to create products and services that truly meet the needs of users.
In this stage, designers conduct observations, interview and communicate with users, and collect information about their environment, their routines, their needs and wants. The main goal of this stage is to collect as much information about users and their needs as possible so that the next stages can be more efficient and successful.
It is important to note that the Empathy stage is not just about collecting information about users. It is a stage in which designers try to understand the world and perspectives of users, their needs and desires, not just factual information about how users use products and services.
The second stage helps to focus on the problem and find out what exactly needs to be solved. This stage consists of the following steps:
The designer can use various tools for focusing, such as mind maps, user journey maps, affinity diagrams, and others. The main goal of focusing is to avoid vagueness and focus on specific tasks and goals.
At this stage, the team gathers to come up with as many ideas as possible, which can then be reviewed and the one that best fits the problem selected.
This stage uses the technique of "brainstorming" to involve all team members and collect their ideas. Brainstorming is an idea generation technique in which all criticism and judgment are prohibited. Ideas are collected on a whiteboard or on paper, with all opinions and suggestions for improvement.
It is important to collect as many ideas as possible, even if some of them seem unrealistic or unnecessary. Ideas can be added at any stage of the process, but at this stage, when the goal is to generate as many ideas as possible, every thought is useful.
At this stage, the development team creates a prototype of the concept that was defined in the previous stage. The prototype can be a physical product or a set of digital files that demonstrate how the finished product will look and function. This stage is important because it allows the team to test how successful their idea will be and how it can be improved before launching it to the market.
A prototype can be created in a variety of ways, depending on what materials and tools are available to the team. For example, a physical prototype can be created using 3D printing, conventional tools, or any other available materials. A digital prototype can be created using software for developing apps, websites, and other digital products.
Prototyping helps the team to test how users will interact with the product and what possible problems might arise. This makes it possible to identify errors and shortcomings before the product is released to the market and make the necessary changes.
After creating a prototype, it is necessary to test it on users to find out how effective the design is. This stage may include conducting user tests, surveys, and collecting feedback.
User testing is a process where designers observe how users interact with the prototype. This allows designers to get a complete picture of how users interact with the product, which can help improve its design.
Surveys and feedback collection is another important aspect of testing. It allows users to express their opinions and suggestions about the product, and designers to get valuable suggestions and ideas for improving it.
In general, testing is an important part of design thinking because it allows you to check the design for its effectiveness and improve it before launching it on the market.
Let's use the specific example of UberEATS to consider how applying the principles of design thinking helped adapt to the Covid-19 pandemic and not only retain existing customers, but also increase the number of partners and users.
UberEATS leveraged design thinking and human-centered design to adapt to the Covid-19 pandemic in several ways.
Firstly, they quickly launched a contactless delivery option to ensure the safety of both customers and delivery partners. This involved redesigning their app to include an option for contactless delivery and providing training for their delivery partners on how to deliver orders safely.
Secondly, they collaborated with restaurants to help them adapt to the new normal by providing tools and resources for takeout and delivery services. This included creating a new feature on their app that allowed restaurants to offer takeout meals, as well as offering marketing support and waiving delivery fees for independent restaurants.
Lastly, UberEATS utilized their design thinking approach to develop new features to address the unique challenges posed by the pandemic. For example, they created a new feature that allowed customers to order groceries from local stores through the UberEATS app, helping to address the increased demand for grocery delivery during the pandemic.
These solutions not only met the needs of their customers and partners, but also helped to differentiate UberEATS from its competitors.
UI/UX design was also critical to UberEATS' success during the pandemic. They created a simple and intuitive user interface that made it easy for customers to find and order from their favorite restaurants. They also streamlined the ordering process to make it as quick and easy as possible. By focusing on the user experience, UberEATS was able to create a loyal customer base that continues to use their service today.
If you're interested in UI/UX design and want to learn more about design thinking, the UI/UX Design course at Beetroot Academy gives participants the opportunity to learn all these principles and skills necessary to work in this field. By implementing design thinking in your work, you can create products and services that meet the needs of your customers and partners, just like UberEATS did during the pandemic.
Not quite unusual for computer fonts, Times New Roman has been around since before computers became a thing. The British newspaper The Times commissioned it in 1931 as a retro update from a regular 19th-century font to something more solid with a strong 18th-century vibe. Old broom sure knows the corners (or so the saying goes), but you can see how the font may feel outdated in the 2020s.
It would not be a stretch to say Times New Roman looks ancient, as we already know it was designed this way. Even Roman in the name is a nod to the Italian school of printing from (15th century!). Seeing old-fashioned characters on a groundbreaking visual device, CRT screen, was weird enough. Now that we have modern LCD screens with much higher resolution and fidelity, a font capturing aesthetics from 300 years ago feels crystal odd.
Fonts classification is usually much more objective than old-fashioned or modern. One reason why Times New Roman may give an archaic vibe is that it is a serif font. All letters (or other characters) come with decorative lines, which range from very subtle to indeed something you would see in an 18th-century newspaper. Note how you can’t see any tails on the letters in this article—or almost any website created in the last 10 years.
Serif and Sans serif versions of Inria font from Black[Foundry]
Times New Roman, much like a lot of newspaper fonts, is rather narrow. It is a mostly business decision: you gotta fit in as much text on a page as possible—even during the times (ha-ha!) when the ratio of ads to stories was much lower. At the end of the day, all publications did that and it’s not like many people would’ve changed morning newspapers just because one is a bit easier to read than the rest.
Computers, however, do not have the same limitation. You don’t pay more for publishing an article or sending a document with much more reasonable line spacing and kerning than the average Victorian newspaper. If it’s the intermediary audience (e.g. client that commissioned an article) that needs to save costs, they can always change character size or pick a narrow font themselves.
Furthermore, the mobile boom is not helping narrow fonts like Times New Roman. Most devices connected to the internet now have a vertical layout. Trying to squeeze in extra characters on screens with little horizontal space will bring nothing but frustration for the reader. Interestingly, The Times had to adapt similarly in print: they had to create yet another Times New Roman-inspired typeface after moving from broadsheet to tabloid in 2004. These days, a narrow font is a compromise on usability that you don’t actually have to make—and people would appreciate it if you didn’t.
One could argue that a document in Times New Roman screams laziness or indifference. If the sender didn’t change the default option to something more balanced, it communicates that they either did not want to make your experience better or did not bother to do that. That kind of attitude does not help to secure a job or scholarship.
On the other hand, certain institutions would have you use nothing but Times New Roman. Some universities strongly encourage if not outright mandate the use of Times new Roman for papers, and so do scientific journals. Older government forms coming as templates to be filled out in Word would not play nice if you try to change the font. That being said, such restrictions are getting scarcer, especially with the rise of Mac. The OS and default office-like apps there have a default font different from Times New Roman (and a new one every few years at that).
The current default font on MacOS
Summing up, the cardinal sin of Times New Roman is defaulting to it without consideration. The font is a must in very few scenarios, but you see it much more often than that. Even Microsoft agrees something has to change: the default font for Word has been Calibri since 2007.
The above-mentioned Calibri is a spiritual successor to Times New Roman. It is now the default font for Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. It is a sans serif font (no decorative lines) that looks perfectly fine on both screens and paper.
If you want to ditch the default and stay sleek, Georgia is a great option. It is a serif font but letter strokes are much more subtle than what you see with Times New Roman. Georgia does not look outdated and works better for vertical screens, as it is not too tight on the horizontal space.
Should you feel like going barebones, Helvetica is the right font. It is a sans serif font looking as bland as it gets—in a good way. Helvetica lacks elements that would make it look too modern, but it also has no archaic elements that would make the font too classic. I think we can trust Apple on that: they used a spin on Helvetica, Helvetica Neue, as the MacOS system font for two years.
Somehow, I felt a big future for tech when the Internet connection was provided in my dormitory
I'm from Kramatorsk, Donetsk region. I studied in Kharkiv and was supposed to become a radio-electronic engineer, but in 2001 I understood exactly what I wanted to do. It was the time when the Internet “appeared” in our dormitory. I liked what was happening there and felt a future was behind it. So I switched to web development. I bought some books, and for the next two years, I had the luxury of free time to study without having to work. 2003 I graduated from the university, and within one month, I found my first work as a PHP developer. I was the happiest junior developer who was paid for the work he liked. I remember my first salary — $250 transferred via Western Union from the USA — was like a fortune. Back then, there were no web developers among my friends. Compared to nowadays, it wasn't that hype. But for me, it was evident that this was a future. I told my friends that all the companies I knew would need a website or should be represented online somehow. And I wanted to be a part of this evolution.
Pink Floyd, my lifetime project, and three kids
I was always a fan of the music of the 70s, and Pink Floyd was my favorite band. But there was no website dedicated to Pink Floyd in Russian or Ukrainian. So I decided to do that on my own. I reached out to the person who did the official newsletters about Pink Floyd to help me with that, and long story short — I made a website, and it turned18 recently. This fan website is the most extended project in my life, but I switched it off because I didn’t want to contribute to the Russian-speaking community anymore. The most crucial thing is the following. Remember I mentioned that person who worked on the official newsletters about Pink Floyd? She is currently my wife, and we are bringing up two kids. We used to make jokes that we actually had three kids — our first one was the Pink Floyd website.
From a web developer to a start-up founder
After two years of work in Moscow, I was back in Kyiv. I didn't like living in Russia, so moving back to Ukraine was obvious. At this time, I stepped out of web development, and in 2007 I started my own business. All went well, but the political regime of Yanukovych reminded me of Russia, so we decided to move to Poland and work remotely. Since 2014, when the war started, it has been impossible to run my business in Ukraine.
And after a 7-year break in web development, a dozen hours of upskilling, and 60 interviews, I have found a new job in Berlin as a senior back-end developer. Now in 2022, I'm a co-founder of the tech startup countX, and all my engineering team is from Ukraine.
How I met Beetroot Academy
It was a coincidence and proof that networking rules. One of my colleagues, Alex, also works as a teacher at Beetroot Academy, so I've heard a lot about this online school. When Alex introduced me to Dmytro, CEO of Beetroot Academy, I was ready to start our partnership. He told me about the fundraising campaign on a mission to help Ukrainian people affected by the war start a new career in tech. So I couldn't stay away from it and donated for scholarships — the less I could do in these challenging times. Now seven women from Donetsk and Luhansk regions are studying at Beetroot Academy, and I’m happy to be their mentor.
Why I support tech education for Ukrainians
Ukrainians, especially men who are out of the country, live with the feeling of guilt. My life is safe, but my three classmates are now fighting against Russia, risking their lives. People try to find their own way to help Ukrainians win this war, overcome the consequences and rebuild the country. So do I.
I already had an idea of investing in tech education. That is where I can contribute as a professional and entrepreneur, so I chose to support the future of Ukraine this way. Many Ukrainians affected by war want to enter the tech industry and need an opportunity to do that. Tech education is one of the most impactful and cost-effective ways to help Ukrainians restore their lives and fight poverty after the war ends. I believe our country will be the next tech cluster after Silicon Valley in the USA and Bengaluru in India. Moreover, I want many Ukrainians to be a part of that success story. I contribute to it by donating for scholarships and would like to encourage others to support Beetroots Academy’s mission.
Imagine a house. To have it running steadily, there should be a good foundation, building blocks, proper infrastructure, good furniture, designs, and usability functions. In web development, the front-end developer is somewhere in between the processes as he takes the ideas from the UI\UX team to turn them into clickable websites that work. Back-end developers, PMs, and QAs take care of the other vital parts, such as proper foundation, team and project management, and testing.
So there's actually a front-end and back-end. We won't say which one is easier. Let's just leave one picture here for your understanding.
To light up a room, you have to click the button. Ensuring it is clickable is a job for a front-end developer; ensuring there is a light is a task for a back-end developer. Front-end web development is the art of using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and a set of other tools for a website/app for a user to see and interact with them.
Basic front-end development glossary
In front-end web development, there are vital terms you should know. We bet you've heard most of them, so let's just keep them handy in the list below.
Programming languages or codes
For example, HTML
In development, you need to speak a language everyone understands — your machine, your code compiler, your user, and your project manager. Below are just a couple of languages we use in the front-end. They look different to everyone, but mean the same and help achieve the result — have the webpage ready and running.
HTML, or HyperText Markup Language, is the code developers use to structure a webpage. Remember seeing a webpage made up of blocks, paragraphs, or tables? HTML helps with that. It originates from a code developed by WHATWG some 30 years ago, in 1993.
JavaScript, conveniently referred to as JS, is a programming language considered one of the cores for front-end development. Designed over 26 years ago, it is now used in almost every webpage you see. Even on the Beetroot Academy website, too :) JS is used to create animation, control multimedia, and generally work with dynamically updating content, buttons, banners, etc.
Here, you can also look at some Javascript libraries — jQuery, React.js, and more here on Kinsta, for example.
Front-end development tools
Git, Google Fonts, W3C, and more
Compilers, linkers, code editors are essential for every front-end developer. These are basic tools that you will use in your daily routine — as home technicians use multitools for repairing the leakage, for example.
To name a few, there are Google Fonts to help you work with fonts, W3C Markup Validation Service to validate your code, and many more.
Version control tools are also part of the list here, used for monitoring changes to your code. We guess you strive to make your code better and better each time. Hence, version controls will help manage the evolution of your code as it becomes clearer and more effective. Git is the most popular, and it's open and free of charge.
Design principles in front-end
In front-end development, we use responsive design to ensure our content fits every (or almost every) gadget and looks good on it. Recall how you open a webpage on your iPhone, reopen it on your laptop, and send it to granny's email — and it still looks good on your grandparents' old-fashioned computer? That's responsive design in action.
Design automatically adapts to given dimensions, so all users feel comfortable interacting with the content. The feeling is the key here — because the front-end is mostly about what the user feels while using your web piece.
CSS, closely connected to HTML, is a code used actually to style an HTML doc. It has everything to do with the colors, styles, and other properties.
Looks quite interesting, huh? Now that you're familiar with the basic front-end development glossary, it's high time to learn the front-end. We hope you find this glossary helpful, no matter which tech direction you will choose. Keep it in your saved links to come back once in a while.
Join our next group in May and start learning with tech industry experts to gain knowledge you need to work as a junior front-end developer.
While such languages as Python and PHP have existed for quite a long time, C# is regarded as a young programming language. Danish software engineer Anders Hejlsberg developed it in the year 2000. Today, he still works for Microsoft as the lead architect of C#. Anders Hejlsberg is also known for being the chief architect of Delphi and the original author of Turbo Pascal.
C# was originally named COOL, whereby the acronym stood for “C-like object-oriented language”. Alas, Microsoft could not hang onto this “cool name” because of trademark law.
C# is pronounced, “see sharp”. The name was taken from the musical notation, whereby a sharp symbol points that the written note should be played a semitone higher. The “sharp” suffix has been used by several other .NET languages that are editions of present languages, including J#, A#, and the functional programming language F#.
The base syntax of the C# is similar to C-style languages such as C, C++, and Java. This programming language most directly represents the underlying Common Language Infrastructure (CLI).
If you plan to create apps for the Microsoft platform, you should definitely learn C#. The developers favor this language for being easy to use and well-designed. Also, it is often recommended programming language to use when creating games through the Unity Game engine.
C# used for:
A list of programs and applications written in C# includes Microsoft Visual Studio, Paint.NET, Windows Installer XML, Open Dental, FlashDevelop, KeePass, NMath, Pinta, Banshee, OpenRA.
Here are a few reasons to work with this particular programming language:
The future looks bright for C# because of its popularity, versatility, and existing creations. If you want to have a solid foundation to become a master developer, you should learn this “cool” programming language.
