If you’re planning to develop a software product, you already know that a product is a far different “beast” than a custom application intended solely for in-house use.

All the demands of a new custom in-house application still exist, of course, but a new product requires considerable extra attention in many areas, including:

• Exceptional insight into fit-for-purpose. Take the time to look beyond the obvious—to find the deeper motivations, needs, goals of the intended user.
• Optimization of the user-interface. Work with the entire UI landscape until it elegantly supports all expected user “impulses” and until there are no occasions when a user will be surprised or in doubt about the application’s behavior.
• Help. “Help” in a software application can have three levels. First, the help provided through the appearance and behavior of the application itself. Sometimes this is referred to as “so user-friendly that help is not required.” It is the most desirable level of help. The second level of help is context-sensitive information displayed when the user explicitly asks for it by pressing a function key or clicking a help button. The third, and least convenient, level of help is online documentation, accessible via an index, search or table of contents. The design objective for a software product is to provide help at the lowest possible level, while insuring that all needed help is available at some level.
• Absolute reliability. Nothing can ruin a product’s potential faster than unreliability. You can have exceptional fit for purpose and super ease-of-use, but after a few crashes or having to reenter lost data, users will drop it quicker than a hot potato—or maybe plague you with excessive demands for expensive technical support.
• Performance. Good performance is an often underrated competitive factor. Sometimes we think of good performance as “getting things done faster.” That is true, of course, but good performance is more often experienced as crispness, fluidity, responsiveness, flexibility and empowerment—in other words as a qualitative improvement in the user experience rather than simply greater speed. In a competitive setting, good performance is an essential ingredient in a product's success.

These are all important attributes for any software application, but in a product they have to “get to the next level.” Why? First, because sooner or later the competition will. Second, technical support is expensive, and needs to be kept as low as possible. Finally, for a product, these attributes lead to greater sales, and investing in them can lead to greater profits.

We know how to design and implement software products. We understand the economics of software products, including the impact of such factors as: cost of development and technical support, fit-for-purpose, ease of use, reliability. We can work with you to establish a balance among these factors to help make your product a success.

As with custom software applications, the goal is to search beyond the first one or two levels of “requirement” so that your product will become a tool so exceptionally natural and enabling that it seems like an extension of the user's intention.

Our job, as part of your product team, is to help bring a balanced combination of vision, pragmatism, and skill to your project—to be an effective force in making your product a success.

• We care about our work and about making your product successful.
• We know that a software product can be even more effective and easier to use than you hoped at the beginning of the project. We know how to make that happen.
• We always stand behind our work. Every project has a two-year warranty.
• We have proved that our work is consistently of the highest quality. Scores of clients and hundreds of successful software applications attest to that.
• We are easy to work with, flexible in organizing projects so they will be compatible with your specific goals and ways of doing business.