University students urged to consider end user needs while developing Apps

Students have been challenged to always examine needs of the community before developing mobile applications in an effort to make their innovations relevant to the end users.

Speaking during the Innovation Saturday at Uganda Management and Technology University (UTAMU) Campus, Mr. Bernard Kizito from Intel youth Ideation camp was disappointed with students who spend a lot of time developing applications whose impact on society is very insignificant.

“Technological must solve current needs of society. This is why a student or any developer must pay keen attention to the problem he envisages to solve before coming up with a solution for it”, Bernard said.

He explained that students whose innovations must be turned into businesses face an uphill task to market their products to clients once user-needs are not streamlined in the first place. Quoting Edward De Bono, Bernard said “Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way”.

Other facilitators present included: Samuel Lubwama and Benjamin Lucas Wacha. The Dean, School of Professional and Vocational Education, Mr. Drake Patrick Mirembe also attended the event.

Participants teamed up into several groups which were tasked to generate innovations based several themes. The interactive event was characterized by brainstorming and pitching of ideas.

Pitched ideas included; ‘Farmers smart watch’ intended to work as an instant messaging service to farmers to get notifications about the farmer in need of help. Other ideas included; helping distant farmers get access to market for their products through their mobile phones, and easing food delivery using online means.

The innovation Saturday coordinator, Kenneth Twesigye encouraged the teams to meet regularly, carry out research on the ideas pitched and continue working in teams to develop innovations.