In Bangladesh, tech companies are on the rise. The market is competitive which is why these companies are always on the lookout for the best engineers and designers that they can find to hire. Unfortunately, the search is endless and good engineers are easy to come across but great engineers are not.

What makes a good engineer a great one? They have a good sense of the bigger picture consequently not making them attached to their code. They are always cross checking their codes to look for bugs and fixing them.  Engineers are logical and they are often found to be at loggerheads with designers. More often than not the problem arises when the engineer is reluctant to adjust codes to incorporate the upgraded design into the product. Designers are focused on user experience and come up with a design after a thorough user research and validation. Here is when the lack of UX in engineering education is felt the most.

User Experience is an integral part of designing the product, as it is user based and ensures the user is not confused. A product without UX leads to engineers and designers chasing task goals without the focus on end users. The end result is frustrated users and no word of mouth. Good experience to users is not just an add on but a basic requirement. This misconception on user experience and product value is widespread. Poor design adds up to the unnecessary additional costs of the company. UX helps to save money on fixing usability issues and thereby helps to boost ROI. . The cost of fixing design after coding is done always a 100 times more costly than to originally create them. The only way to tackle it would be to incorporate UX knowledge in the university curriculum.

A total number of 121 universities are there in Bangladesh, out of which 85 are private and 36 of them are public universities. There is a mismatch of knowledge taught in the universities with what is required in the job market. The graduates are not equipped with the basic necessities required to sustain in the job market. Consequently, the number of unemployment is going up.  In Bangladesh, there is a great demand for software engineering. Only a few of these universities’ curriculum offer a subject named “Software Engineering” does not really teach them what it is to design, innovate and code programs. It might come across as harsh but that is what we have seen here at Userhub while teaching students. Human Computer Interaction (HCI) is taught at some universities but the concept of how to make users want to interact with the software is not taught.  There is a substantial gap between design and HCI and this missing link is User Experience (UX).  Students who complete their Computer Science bachelors more often than not end up working for software firms. When these students directly go for coding without being trained for it, the end result is bad software hampering the businesses. Consequently, a lot of money is invested into fixing these poorly designed products and turning them into something good and beneficial for users.

Keeping in mind the youth and the future of the country, UX Saturday with Wahid started with the hope of reaching out to as many as possible to share knowledge and guide towards a bright future. It used to be held online but the widespread bandwidth issue caused it to come to a halt. UX Saturday with Wahid has reached out to as many as 3000 students since its inception in the late 2011. UX Saturday with Wahid open for all students and young professionals so that they can learn and build a better future for themselves and the country.