Software Usability

I remember playing bumble-bee soccer (see footnote below) when I was a young kid. I was never around the ball, I was always looking for the position that needed to be filled, usually somewhere between the swarm and the goal. When I look back at most of the activities that I have been involved in, I see the same pattern being repeated, I always look for the most important task that is being neglected. Sometimes that has meant stepping on somebody's toes, other times I have been seen as a savior :).

Within the last couple of years, I have become more and more interested in software usability. Based on my soccer experience, this is probably because the company I currently work for has never concerned themselves with usability (or rather, the CEO and president were the usability experts, period). We never did usability testing, other than a demo to them. In fact, we never even bothered having a review process to make sure areas with similar functionality functioned similarly. Within the last year we were purchased by another company that alleges they are more focused on supporting existing customers than on attracting new ones (the difference as I understand it is more focus on the user and less on a feature checklist).

In my career I have come to the conclusion that most software sucks. In fact, it seems that the quality of software is inversely proportional to the price. Although the field of software usability is not new, it doesn't seem to be getting as much attention as it should (what could be more important than the user interface?). The benefits of creating usable software are well known. For the end user the benefits include increased productivity, reduced training, improved data entry accuracy, and reduced anxiety over fighting with bad software to get the job done. Their are also many benefits to the software company such as increased sales (to both new and existing customers), ability to charge a premium for the software and/or service, and decreased customer support costs. Although there is a cost to usability (you have to commit to it as a company, train developers, testers, and managers, and perform some type of usability studies which should include talking to real customers), based on what I believe to be true (from reading and limited experience), the benefits seem to far outweigh the costs.

I have recently read the book The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman. This seems to be the beginners handbook of usability. It lays the groundwork for understanding usability from a designers perspective. Although Donald is an academic (professor of cognitive science at the University of California), the book is well written and understandable even for those without a PHD. The book was originally published in 1988 and was recently reprinted with few modifications. One of the things I enjoyed most when reading his book were the predictions he made, some of which have come true already and others we still have not reached yet. If you are interested in learning about usability, I would recommend starting with this book.

The next book in my queue is The Usability Engineering Lifecycle: A Practitioner's Handbook for User Interface Design (Interactive Technologies) by Deborah Mayhew. This book is a bit larger and seems to go into a lot of detail on how to actually do usability. Of the few pages I've read so far, it seems like a good book :). Of course, I also read many different blogs that frequently include posts on usability. One of my favorites is Jeff Atwood's blog, Coding Horror. Jeff writes often and well and has become a minor celebrity within the software industry for posts such as The Programmer's Bill of Rights. He frequently writes posts on software interface design and usability and has a number of people who comment on his articles. He has also been featured on some popular (for developers anyway) net casts such as .Net Rocks.

Bumble-Bee Soccer - When young children play soccer, it resembles a swarm of bees around the soccer ball.

Book Review - The Four Steps to the Epiphany

Book: The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products that Win.

Author: Steven Gary Blank

Rating*: Recommended

Review: Perhaps one of the worst edited books I've read, but it's got great content. This book outlines how to develop a business that focuses on the customer. It defines what strategies to use at each stage of a business based on the type of market the business is in. Blank uses business that have failed as warnings to others (reminds me of a great demotivational poster).

My favorite example was Webvan and how it grew too fast, too quickly and spent too much money before proving that they had a product that could support such growth.

This book breaks down the process of building a business into many steps, each with it's own set of deliverables. The process actually reminds me a bit of agile development applied to a business process. Basically, take small bites and iterate until you are ready to move to the next stage. It's difficult to predict where the market might take you so be flexible, preserve capital, and don't jump ahead of the market (spending millions on branding is not always the best use of capital before the product is even available as is pointed out in a couple examples in the book).

What I like most about this book is the focus on the customer and market type. These are very important concepts when starting a business but are often times overlooked, especially by entrepreneurs that have a technical background. If you're starting a business and you want to succeed, you should definitely read this book.

*NOTE: The book reviews on my blog are written for developers considering starting a Micro ISV. The rating (recommended, not recommended, etc) is based on content from that perspective only.

Book Review - Engineering Your Start-up

Book: Engineering Your Start-Up: A Guide for the High-Tech Entrepreneur

Author: James A. Swanson, Michael L. Baird

Rating: Recommended

Review: This book is focused on financing a high-tech startup. Although I recommend the self-funded approach, it's important to know the ins and outs of financing so that when you want to grow your self-funded company, you haven't made any major mistakes that will make that more difficult than it already is.

This book is a bit dry and technically challenging (at least for non-finance people). However, the authors do a decent job of defining the jargon used in the industry.

A few of the gold nuggets in the book...

• Ch 6, Startup Financing Terminology and Stages - This includes some of the most basic terminology that a entrepreneur should know to keep from looking too foolish :).
• Ch 8, Evaluate Markets and Target Customers - Reinforces the arguments for a small (but potentially profitable), niche market and discusses ways to analyze the market to make sure that you can succeed (at least increase your chances).
• Ch 20, The Legal Form of Your Startup - Definitions for all of the basic types of organizations (Class C, Class S, Partnerships, etc).
• Ch 21, Making the Startup Decision - Things you need to consider when starting a business, especially while still working for another company.

Business-of-Software Book Review

This is a review of some of the books I've read over the last year concerning the business of software. I'll post more reviews as I finish some of the other books in my collection.

• MUST READ - Micro-ISV: From Vision to Reality (Bob Walsh) - This book has a lot of information to help decide what features a product should have, who the market for the product should be, and how to market to that group. It also includes what legal issues you need to consider when launching a product. The book uses a lot of examples of real software companies to illustrate the concepts in the book.
• MUST READ - Eric Sink on the Business of Software (Expert's Voice) (Eric Sink) - This is a collection of articles written by Eric Sink for various publications. He is the founder of SourceGear, a software company that produces a version control system (he also has a great blog!). The articles seem to cover most of the aspects of running a small software company, such as marketing, funding (or how to avoid it :), hiring, etc. The articles are well written and sprinkled with enough humor to make them enjoyable. Eric is the author that coined the term "Micro-ISV".
• Recommended - Bringing Your Product to Market...In Less Than a Year: Fast-Track Approaches to Cashing in on Your Great Idea (Don Debelak) - Ok, this is not, technically, a book on the business-of-software, but it's still a great book to read to understand many of the issues that a startup might face. It's main claim to fame is the concept of turbo-outsourcing which is pretty much a non-issue with software (unless there are specific hardware requirements). Since software has such significantly different production requirements and distribution channels than typical marketable products, I wouldn't put this on my "must read" list, but I still believe it's worth reading.