Sunday, January 26, 2014

Juice and Software.


Let's talk about Juice.


Video probably necessary.


"Juice" is an important part of software. Creating a user experience that makes people walk away going "wow, I never knew spreadsheets could be so much fun" is absolutely a key priority, probably THE key priority. Creating a useful, diverse, powerful application isn't going to accomplish anything unless people use it, and nobody is going to use your application unless:

A) your software does something nobody else's can, in which case, you might still flop.

B) your software is already the staple utility of a large workforce.

C) you can acquire and maintain a user base by being user-friendly and properly "juicy".

Exceptions may apply. Several major graphics packages (3ds Max, Maya) are great examples of item B. They started out with a relative few core features, and have had new features bolted-on for decades, resulting in submenus within submenus and the need for a search bar in the options menu.

The "real" term for juice is user experience, and there's a field that corresponds to it: user experience design


A key point to take away from the wikipedia article is that, while software engineering seems more about the architecture of the code, making it maintainable and easy to add features to, reliable, and so on, the component of making users enjoy using your software is a major one as well. People have built whole careers out of user experience design, and while I'm not sure if it's something I would want to do, I might consider it!


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