I had one of those wonderful moments today where I got to appreciate the brilliance of an independent software programmer who wrote just a beautiful, intuitive program with a deceptively simple interface.
Background:
As scary as it might be to the folks here who actually know something about computers, I am considered the tech guru in my company.
I know that's funny, but what can I say...the company is a little backwards. Now, you all know
I'm no tech guru, but I have a good critical eye. I can hop on a software program, push a few buttons and tell, within a matter of minutes whether something makes sense or if it is a pile of crap....especially when it applies to my industry which (she says modestly) nobody knows better than I do. I
am an industry guru.
Important info - I'm in the 11 billion dollar logos-on-products business. Pens, mugs, shirts, stuff like that.
So, for the past three years
everybody in our industry who has the least interest in booting a computer up has been consumed by the "revolutionary" idea of using technology to show customer's what their logo will look like on real products without having to run actual proofs. This sounds like a great idea but there are so many technical industry factors to final product appearance, that it is
highly impractical. I had the same idea myself, before I realized that tons of people had it...commissioned someone to write the software for our then-yet-to-be-launched website, and about 20K in, realized that it just couldn't be done effectively and abandoned it. There is simply no practical way to leave the product/logo manipulation in the hands of the customer and have that customer achieve a result that can be relied on to resemble what a finished product would look like.
In the last two years, I can't count the number of times I've had somebody from our company come running to me about this new program we could license, or a competitor's website that claims to allow customers to see what a product looks like on screen with their logo before they buy or whatever...and then I have to pretend to be patient while I test Whatever the Program, taking five minutes to point out all of the holes and pitfalls along the way.
Friday, I got the call again.
Company president, for the 95th time, Andrea can you come in the conference room, guy here has a program that will let the sales reps put company logos on products to make presentations.
Yawn. Rolleyes. Mutter to myself. Think about lunch. Yawn. Push chair back. Go in conference room. Try to be polite. Wonder to myself if it will take 30 seconds or a minute until I shoot the guy down.
Damned if somebody didn't finally get it right. 
The beauty of the little program (which took them three years to develop) is that it is utterly simple. There are maybe three or four different options in the drop down boxes at the top...that's it. Out of a myriad of options of product imaging manipulation, they boiled it down to the essentials...which is the
key to making something like this usable.
I listen to the guy for a minute, push a couple of buttons, stare blankly at him... he thinks I must be stupid or something because I can't even talk for a solid 60 seconds....starts to try to explain it again. The company president is looking at me nervously because I have shot her down at least 20 times on programs that she has been excited about. I stop the guy and say
Wow. You did it. This is great. This is great.
He looks happy.
Then, I say, "Of course, the sales rep would have to be working with a jpg in the intended imprint color..if you wanted to show a sample of an etch or a deboss, the art department would have to manipulate the jpg first for a color change. But, you made the right choice, leaving the color manipulation out of the basic program, because as soon as you try to bring that in, all hell breaks loose on the user interface and you've got a program that becomes way too wild with options and no longer usable to the average person."
The guy practically breaks into song. "Wow, you really do understand! That's exactly it."
We had our love fest bonding moment where we understood each other
, and I got to compliment him profusely many more times.
The moral of the story: the beauty in most software programs that you expect the average user to be able to actually
use is in simplicity. Simplicity doesn't bring you glory and oohs and ahs from anyone but a small subset of people who actually understand what went on behind the scenes to make something that looks this simple. It takes discipline and an eye on the actual
purpose of the program to create something that is usable. Leave the bells and whistles. Let's talk function.
What a great day.
Andrea
The joy of a simple program 
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