Software Made For The People

I've discussed my opinions on designing softwares and the importance of the customer's opinions. If you haven't  read my two previous posts in regards to this paticular topic, then please take a minute or two and skimmed it over. They will give you an idea on my stands on this issue.

• How Do You Engage With Your Customers?
• How Far Do You Go Architecturing Your App?

My main point in both posts comes down to "Listen To Your Customers", "Design Base Around Your Customers"  Today, my business parnter Jackson forwarded me these two excellent articles which articulared my view much better.

• Yours, Mind and Ours by Eric Sink
• Feature Bloat: The Product Manager's Dilemma
  

But there are so many customers asking for so many things, we can't possibly cover them all, we are just human. Even if we can, we will run into a bloated software that at all times,  80% of the people will use only 20% of the features.

It's perfectly okay! My point is this. Design when it's NEEDED! Design when your customers ask for it.  Don't design just because you can and because it's cool. When there is a request, there will be hundres of other people who would share the simialr needs.  You can do some calucations in terms of ROI and make your decisions base on that.

Another apprach -  isolate the needs and break up your application into sub apps. Such that 80% of your users will use exactly 80% of your software (give or take), the other 20% will use the 20% if they need them. This apporach not only saves money for the 80% of the people, but also gives the choice to them if they ever decide to use the other 20%.

How do you make such decision? What is 80% and what is 20%? Again, "Listen To Your Customers".

Communication

I've mentioned that we should listen to your customers repeatly, but when we talk about "communication", we know by definition, it goes both ways. To make a relationship works, both side have to hear the other side's story.  

So how do you listen to your customers? I've mentioned a few of my thoughts in How Do You Engage With Your Customers?  which also described my opinions on how to make your customers hear you.

By faciliates the communications on both sides, this creates a much more healthy relationship and more importantly, I believe you will be able to build the trust needed these days between people! Software makers are people and the users are people. We are not all unreasonable as long as we understand each other.






 

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