How do you build better software? Building better software means knowing why projects fail, making them secure and building a product that people will use. The following articles help you to improve how you approach software development.

1. Software projects can fail. The way we build software can help to create a project failure. Ulrika Park, Scrum Master at Smart Bear, has complied a list of 50 ways software development can “fail”. She explains what we can do to fix the issue and what we need to stop doing.
2. When building software or web applications, security can be overlooked. Sometimes you are so excited by an idea, that you jump into writing code that you forget to secure your project. Use these 10 Tips for Secure Development. By keeping your development environment and project secure, you can lessen the cost of dealing with exploited code and reputation management.
3. Better products consider their users. They choose to use new technologies and programming languages and database that have a supportive developer community. The product is easy to use. Want to build a product that stands out? Here are three tips to build a better product.
4. When you have poor or badly written code, it can affect the performance of your software. If your users don’t like the performance or even look of the product, you may loose people to your competition. How do you improve you your code? By writing, clean code. Here are the Top 9 qualities of clean code.

As you start 2013, you can begin by making the perfect portfolio, charging for your expertise, plan out your next huge web project and learning new design tips and patterns.

1. Web Designers and Developers need a portfolio that shows what you can do. You can focus on niche projects or display the range of your abilities. If you need a portfolio or looking to freshen yours up, look at Make the Perfect Portfolio.
2. So You’re Going to Start a New Huge Web Project helps you to think about including mobile in your design and using version control. Every web project is different but you’ll need to look at things like design, code, content and your CMS.
3. Developers can learn how make their projects look better by learning about these 5 design tips. By using these 5 tips, you can take your design from ugly to better looking. A better looking design can encourage more people to use your web site or app.
4. When you start your next development project, you can use these Design Patterns For The Web to help you build a better user experience. Not every Design Pattern works for every project. These Design Patterns give you tools to make better decisions for your next project.
5. You meet a new client and they ask for a Request For Proposal. You work very hard on it. Then, they tell you that they like your proposal but going to have someone else do it. In How To Reframe the RFP and Charge For Your Creative Expertise, you’ll learn how to get clients to pay for your expertise.

Notes from the UX Experience meetup:

“Think strategic about UX before designing.”

Perception, Interaction, Emotion/Habit

• UI is a tool for influencing all 3 (listed above).
• Perception is the reality of how people perceive you.
• Things fail when you force people to change their behaviors.
• UX is business goals, brand strategy and user research
• It is the design of user emotion, interaction and perception.
• Through the strategic understanding of what happens before, during and after each interaction.
• You create. Created about you. Created around you.
• To be really good at it, there’s a lot to learn. And learning happens in real time.
• Ask: “if this, then what” or “if this, then why”

Before building

• What do we need to learn?
• What does it really mean?
• How do we deliver?
• What does it look like?

Questions to ask when designing

• Who?
• What? [Customers’ needs, Business Goals]
• Where? [Location]
• When? [Time, Frequency]

• Content, Customization, and Context
• Why? Is this going to be useful to the customer?

Solving the Why

• Personas are important *you’re not designing for you.
• content is relevant
• focus on behaviors
• drives the content/messaging/information architecture
• models the experience
• keeps the team focused
• You might make something useful for your customers

Inspiration

• collect different items for inspiration
• reverse engineer how a design or brand was created.

What do UXer’s do?

• expand the realm of what you are designing.
• Get a client involved by asking questions about what they need not what they want.

UX has niches that you concentrate on: UI, Interaction and UX Strategist

Check out: Adaptive Path, Ideo, onwardsearch.com, UX Magazine