We often tout the GUI as the most important design feature in software.  It makes sense; it is the most visible part of any software product.  But how important is the interface to the overall success of a product?   I’ve seen excellent products that have absolutely horrible interfaces – and here’s the thing:  they still sell.  An excellent product is one which fills a need, and companies will purchase it if it does the job – pretty or not.  The problem is that those needs change, and when they do it typically has been expensive and cumbersome to adapt a product to fit those changes.

We Humans are capable of learning new interfaces fairly quickly. Consider the slight variations in telephone keypads – how long does it take us to dial an unfamiliar telephone?  How difficult is it to use an unfamiliar automated cash machine?  How quickly do we learn the shortcuts for a new mobile phone?  Certainly these examples cite both excellent universally acceptable design practices but also our ability as humans to adapt and learn new designs easily.  More interesting – I propose it takes the average person less time these days to learn an unfamiliar interface than it did 15 years ago, and I attribute this to the fact that we are presented with new interfaces much more frequently now than we ever have been before.

Case in point:  Video game controllers have come a long way in the past 15 years.  Atari’s now-nostalgic one button joystick interface bears no resemblance to Microsoft’s XBox 360 ergonomic controller with it’s astounding 25 buttons.  Every year another new interface is presented, normally around the time that Santa Claus requires his wish list, and the next plastic race car wheel or wireless band instrument is marketed to eager consumers hungry for a new interface to master.

In business software, the same issues occur.  Interfaces grow and change throughout the system life cycle.  With time, all interfaces must adapt to support increased functionality – or just as likely increased marketability!

This prospect was once expensive and cumbersome for mobile software, because of the complexity and unique resources required to develop for these relatively obscure platforms.  Navara partners use the Navara Design Center to quickly and visually create and modify interfaces for the most popular mobile platforms, so the interface can easily change as the users’ needs change.  So when the next change comes depend on Navara, and let’s solve the interface puzzle together.

This is an excerpt that I wrote for ebaY on mobile phone

Carrier Specific vs. Unlocked Mobile Phones

Many mobile phones (and PDA and smartphone devices) which are for

sale on eBay are phones which were purchased through North American carriers. The largest North American Carriers are Cingular, T-Mobile, Verizon,

Sprint Nextel, and Rogers wireless (Canada). In NA, these carriers work with the handset manufacturers to “lock” the devices so that they only work on

each specific carrier network. This practice of restricting the phone provides some security to the carriers, and they sell the phones at a subsidized

price to the consumers figuring they make more money by locking consumers into long service contracts.

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One problem that I frequently encounter is presenting non-x86

software to a large group. Crowding around a mobile device to examine features and functionality with a group of larger than a few people is

impossible – and if you use online meeting webinar services, you need something to show that little mobile device screen on your x86 monitor. The

solution? Emulators, Simulators, and Display Software. Read the rest of this entry »

In your home office – internet connectivity is the second most

important utility, right behind electrical power. When you do fall off the grid, however, the best way to not completely loose it is to have a plan in

place. I have four stages of redundancy to make sure I can always hit the net before I give up and miss a demo – your sales team will appreciate it!

1) Power down and reset everything. About half of the broadband outages are resolved by reconnecting to the service. If that

doesn’t work, most likely these days there is an outage – and most providers don’t even notice an outage until they get 10% reported down on a node.

Keep your provider on speed dial on your mobile or non-VOIP phone, just to check, then when they tell you it will be next week before they can roll a

truck, politely make the appointment and move on to step 2 below.
2) Scan the airwaves! Just right click on your wireless

networking icon and choose “view available wireless networks”.

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Having a pre-packaged canned demo laying around can be super-

useful. It doesn\’t replace a good, old fashioned live demo, but it\’s another tool in the toolbox. Canned demo\’s don\’t break in front of

the customer, they can be on-demand on a website, CD, or even sent through email. They can play unattended at trade shows, like a commercial, catching

the eye of a passerby and initiating an introduction for you.

Slideshows

muvee : autoproducer

If you don’t own a pair, you aren’t a road warrior. There. I

said it.

Noise cancelling headphones don’t actually cancel all noise out. They work by sensing a noise via the external microphone, then

transmitting an equal but opposite noise in the earphone speaker – therefore ‘cancelling’ out the noise that would otherwise enter your ear. Pretty

cool. However, they only work within certain frequencies, so human speach for instance still comes through… boo! They work best on consistant

noise, such as the hum of a jet engine.

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Remember the days of having to physically meet with people? Flying

in to see some random potential client who may or may not have any idea what your software does is a very expensive way to pre-qualify an account. How

did businesses survive?

Today we have another tool in the toolbox – online meetings. Don’t get me wrong, there is absolutely still a need to

meet face to face, and I’ve never seen a sale occur without an in-person meeting. However, we can use online meeting services to cheaply pre-qualify

accounts. Make sure your potential customers understand what you do before spending thousands to send a team across the country or across the world.Â

That makes good business sense to me.

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I use Microsoft Virtual PC to create virtual machines for my various

software demonstrations. In the past, I have used VMware Workstation, but I found the Microsoft product has more straitforward virtual networking

setup options, which ultimately means that it is less customizable, but it works just fine for sharing network adapters with the host operating system,

which is perfect for me.

Important to note, there are two different types of Virtual Machine products out there – Desktop and Server.

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