Re: Rant... please let me help you fix the user interface

["Mike Starr" <mikestarr-techwr-l -at- writestarr -dot- com>]

Like I said in my responses elsewhere in this thread, this product suite is 
an extremely niche product. However, with a few very small tweaks, we can 
start selling it into a related larger niche market. But this is anything 
but a professional development environment. It's more like a mom and pop 
operation barely out of the garage. The entire company is three programmers 
and me... no support people, no administrative assistants, no QA team, no 
marketing team, no sales team. The lead programmer is also the only person 
involved in sales of the product... it's a one-on-one sales effort. So if 
we're going to start selling it into another market, it needs to be 
professional in appearance and easy to sell because there's more competition 
in the other market.

All things considered, I'm having the time of my life on this assignment. 
I'm enjoying it much more than I've enjoyed any other assignment in the last 
ten years or so. I want desperately to see this product thrive in a new 
market... who knows, they might actually offer me an employee position and 
I'd probably take it.

Mike
--
Mike Starr                            WriteStarr Information Services
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----- Original Message -----
From: "John Posada" <jposada01 -at- yahoo -dot- com>
To: <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Sent: Friday, March 23, 2007 12:38 PM
Subject: Re: Rant... please let me help you fix the user interface

>> John Posada makes a good point about updating the user interface
>> of a clunky old product:
>>
>> > Are you also going to take on the whole regression
>> > testing effort and budget?
>>
>> (With my user-advocate hat on, I don't like that answer either. But
>> the business of business is business.)
>
> Thanks, Steve.
>
> The point I was trying to make is that there are issues to changing a
> GUI. You don't just shuffle things around and change text here and
> there. Any change you make has to be tested and regression tested.
>
> It may be that the application is reaching the end of its lifecycle
> and the less money put in, the better for the company...and for you.
> It may be that what you see as a gui change has ramifications you
> aren't aware of. Not everything is code-only.
>
> So...when they say no, they are saying no to the sum of the impacts
> vs the perceived benefit. At a previous company, the written
> justification and specification for adding a couple of buttons and a
> field to a GUI was about 35 pages of documentation.
>
> Understanding, recognizing, and justifying based on all the factors
> will help you be taken more seriously by your management, over
> standing in the middle of the floor saying "The GUI sucks and I
> should change it!"
>
> John Posada
> Senior Technical Writer
>
> "They say everyone needs goals. Mine is to live forever.
> So far, so good."
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