It was an amazing opportunity for her to present User Experience to the audience in the Algiers « Ecole Polytechnique » premises...

Amina, can you tell us about your talk, and what you meant to achieve?

I presented User Experience to about 20 startupers: what it is, the approach and the main tools, that I illustrated by some of the best practices for web projects. My goal was to make them aware of how important is User Experience, and to demonstrate through practical examples its impact on the design of innovative projects.

It’s not that easy to present this field of expertise to an unfamiliar audience…

It’s true – it’s a real challenge but that’s what’s fascinating! The presentation forced me to be synthetic and adopt a different point of view to talk to non-designers. I had to find the right way to give them UX notions... In the end, what worked the best and was the most profitable for the attendants was the workshop format; I was able to do individual follow-up of the projects.

Did you have the opportunity to attend other Webdays sessions?

I could only attend two out of the four days of the event, but the program was packed! I mainly helped on the Start-Up Week-end; I had in particular the honor of being part of the jury.

Can you explain to us what is a Start-Up Week-end?

The students have 54 hours to come up with an innovative project idea and build its business plan before pitching and defending it in front of a jury of pros in various fields. I was able to discover projects on really different themes: connected shoes, medical care, environment and so on

So, what did you think of the whole experience?

This stay was very intense and enriching: I come back from the event with my batteries recharged! It was an incredible opportunity for great exchanges with the students and many pros. It’s very interesting to see that the projects pitched could have been presented in Paris or London or any tech city. I think the only difference is on the realism and soundness of the business models. So, I hope that this type of weekend and incubators will propagate for the development of the Algerian ecosystem!

 

About the Webdays

The Webdays are events for sharing knowledge, learning and creating new innovation ecosystem throughout the 5 continents. It’s an international format including conferences, workshops and challenges. The first Webdays took place in 2011 – and now it’s happening in more than 20 different countries.

On the Algiers 2014 edition program: talks and workshops on e-governance, e-administration, digital and economic intelligence, bitcoin, introduction to UX, but also training on photo & video (retouching, editing), MOOC, SEO, Black Hat or advanced security.