Software Design Services
Software has reached what´s called an inflection point. A point where the fundamental concepts of computing need to be rethought, if it is to provide the big benefit gains of the future. Up until now, users have been adapting to computers, and for good reason. Computers used to be underpowered and overworked. Now with the situation reversed we all have supercomputing class underachievers. More extreme versions of the same kind of thinking which caused information anxiety last generation are insufficient to deal with the problem in this one.
What if your next project was about:
- Using persuasive technology design principles to increase information exchange and decrease noise on your intranet. Brute force filtering and monitoring aren’t designed to accomplish this objective because they target symptoms of system dynamics, not the leverage points
- What lies beneath surface opinion often found in focus group and beta testing. Desirability testing tackles the thorny problems when communicating between technologists and users, marketing and programming. Desirability techniques can reveal information once thought inaccessible. Users have trouble in one key area: saying what they would buy if it only existed. This is what the product has to be to compete going forward, not what competitors were doing in the past. Often this missing factor causes companies to design for what users did buy, or basic minimum function, not what they will buy. (How do you get users and stakeholders to rank priority in a way you can have confidence in? Ask me when we talk.)
- A content mangagement system answering real-world business questions and management concerns, such as:
- Does the Document provide value to the customer or cut costs?
- What action was taken because of the Document, by whom, and what parts of documents no longer serve recipient objectives and need to change?
- What does an at-a-glance overview of documents tell about the company in terms of proper focus, management, and problems or opportunities?
- Putting the Customer Relationship Management in CRM with functional requirements meeting the following criteria:
- Management implies measuring the customer relationship. Does your current system measure the customer relationship, or mere purchases?
- Management implies modifying the customer relationship. What point–of–contact tools does the computer interface make available for changing a customer’s interaction with the company, improving customer relationship measures?
- Scheduling and project management software time-style sheets for different types of work: oversight, independent, goal-based, prototype-driven, relationship-driven, continuous improvement, mission-aligned, knowledge, opportunity, and other styles.
- The assumptions that build errors into the system from the moment coding starts
- Going beyond computer interfaces just getting out of the user’s way (usability) to leverage human ability and potential. And programming as if people didn’t just matter, but are integral for business advantage.
- Moving beyond a feature set to the design coherency which supports user workflow.
Has Conventional Programming Given Your Users All The Interactivity of a Straitjacket?
Conventional programming assumes coding happens before feedback, or sometimes even before deciding a project’s strategic focus. Thus coding too low to bother with interaction design often becomes impossible to change it now by the time designers are called in. The tragedy is the self-fulfilling prophecy of design as a decorative flourish.
It does not have to be that way.
If you are content in the knowledge that I have ideas, concepts and working examples that could drive your business to dramatic new heights of sales and profitability — but you’re simply too busy struggling with the inertia of the status quo to take advantage of them — that is, of course, your option.
But if you are wondering what other options are available, or wondering how to solve information problems in the larger support systems around the project, you can find out quite easily.
What I propose is a short conversation. In those minutes I’ll ask you a few key questions, examine your goals, and provide a revealing look at the future capabilities "sleeping" in your services and products today ...advise you on how to "wake ’em up" …and show you to how to introduce next paradigm products the competition can’t imagine.