November 4th, 2007 — Web 2.0
Every application, whether its a desktop app or a web app should start really small. Whenever we think of a product or an application we tend to include 100 different features in it. But that is a mistake to be avoided.
We all use microsoft word and excel. But we are experienced with it and we have been using it since their first version was launched. But show that to a person who has never seen word or excel before. He will find it quite hard to digest since there are a lot of menus, features and tool bars. But still those products are used because there are millions of users who knows how to use it and they virtually act as support team, teaching the newbies.
Starting small is particularly important in the case of web apps because most web apps are very new. We dont want the users to undergo a 2 weeks training program to use an application. The app should be simple enough to start using it right away.
Conduct brainstorming sessions about your product ideas and find out the essence of the product. Create a simple to use product with that and do your launch. Gain users and then slowly build upon it.
This will save a lot of your developers time, you can get to know the market, and you will get a lot of feedback. Since you are not scaring off your initial userbase with a cluttered interface, they will promote your product and campaign for you.
I am using mindmaps for all the discussion that we conduct. The first time I saw this product I had no idea what a mind map is. But the product is really simple to use so that I became an active user in a day.
If you already have added a ton of fetaures to your product and you are struggling with the interface then there is a means to solve that problem. You can create 2 interefaces. One of the beginners, which focuses on the core features and an advanced version with all the cool “nice to have” features.
Share This
Tags:
Development
Related posts
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
November 3rd, 2007 — Presentations, Web 2.0
Andy Clarke gave a presentation at the “Future of the Web” summit. He tries to answer the following questions in his presentation.
What are the different types of designers. ?
What is the job of a designer ?
How to do design for developers. ?
This is a must listen for every one who works on web projects.
Download the audio file here
Download the Presentation here
Share This
Tags:
Development
Related posts
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
September 12th, 2007 — Articles
Every web application has got 2 parts. The frontend and the backend, or the design and the coding. Frontend is the artists job and the backend is the techies job. But these two parts are very much interconnected sometimes that it gets very difficult to see them as separate stuff. Most of the time the developer ends up doing the design also.
This is one great mistake to be avoided. Design and coding should be treated as two separate jobs and two different people should do it. Never let your developer do the design also. Its a total waste of time.
Design is something that changes quite often. If the developer does design also a lot of this productive time will be wasted on making the smallest of changes.
Also the developer must be able to develop the application with out even worrying about the interface. If proper template creation methods are used, the complete web application can be made with out the design.
The designer can later design the pages and the programmer can plug it in. In this approach, even if the design changes often, its easy for the developer to accommodate the changes.
Share This
Tags:
Development
Related posts
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
September 2nd, 2007 — Uncategorized
Once you launch your product, track the usage carefully. Plan for usage tracking while in development itself. Develop modules that can gather usage stats of various features you build into the product.
In most cases product development teams gather the requirement from a small set of target markets. In the web domain that is not enough, as we cannot really predict what is going to happen to your product. Many of your pet features may be ignored by your users.
Building usage tracking tools into your product will help you to analyze the usage pattern followed by majority of your users. And that is where you need more attention and testing. More used features need more attention and testing even if they are simple.
Building dashboards for various usage stats that you collect will be very helpful to get an over all idea very easily. Graphs and charts are helpful to read a lot of stats data very easily and predict trends.
Share This
Tags:
Development
Related posts
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
September 1st, 2007 — Uncategorized
A very common mistake product development teams make is that, they think of a product as a set of features. But there something more to a product, that makes it a success. Every product that we use must make an emotional attachment with ourselves. This attachment is very much visible in the web world. Think how much you are attached to your gmail inbox.
I remember a website that was launched for the youth, when I was in school. It had a lot of features, movie script writing, online discussions, and a hell of a lot of stuff for the youth. But they didnt even last till their first anniversary. The market in india at that time was not ready for such a website. Despite of all the cool stuff they failed to get that connection with the user.
Write down all the features you need in your new product. Now find out the most important 5 features. In most cases you wont need more than 5 features in a new product. Now add to the top of the list the most important feature. “Easy to use”. Easy is the most important feature. Make a conscious effort to make all the products you make easy to use, even if it means cutting down a few features.
Share This
Tags:
Development,
Gmail
Related posts
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
