As a front-end developer (at ViriCiti) I mostly work on data driven websites/web-applications. One of the things I like to do the most is make something useful for a user out of a big amount of data. It's very rewarding to build a front-end that helps a user understand and gain new insights about this data.
As a student Communication and Multimedia design, or CMD, at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences simply building a front-end or data visualization is not all I do. We make user-centric designs. CMD learns you to really think about the user that is going to use your product. I like to bring this mindset to the table in data driven websites/web applications. Far to often the true power of an application doesn't come out because the front-end doesn't appeal to the user's wishes.
The code sprint at Wallscope was a perfect example of this. We could've just started making front-ends and datavisualizations. Instead, we've spent two days figuring out what we actually wanted to make for users and who those users are. Doing this from the start greatly helped the process of building the end product. At every step of the project we could fall back on those few days of discussing the project to make decisions. In the end, you will have build a more meaningful application for the user.
