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Displaying posts from August, 2009 (Clear Search) Friday, August 21st, 2009
By Tyler King
Why hello there. You've stumbled upon the Less Annoying Blog where we talk about all things related to software, business, and technology. This blog is written by Less Annoying Software, a business that specializes in software development and consulting.
We believe that most software companies mess up some of the most basic aspects of their products. In order to gain widespread adoption, new technology only needs to strive for one thing: don't be annoying. Most companies spend all their time adding features when they should be making sure that the user experience doesn't suck. Great features don't matter if the users hate the product.
So that's why we started this project. When we develop software, we make something that users actually enjoy. With this blog, we will talk about how everyone can improve their experience with technology using the same basic principles that we apply to our designs.
Here's a little background about us:
Bracken
As of the writing of this post, Bracken is finishing up his PhD in biological engineering from MIT. His focus is on the computational side of things, so he's got tons of experience writing complex, powerful programs to help solve very challenging engineering problems. He also manages the servers for his lab, so he's no stranger to the infrastructure needs of organizations.
Tyler
I'm working at a software start-up company right now. As anyone that's worked at a tech start-up already knows, wearing multiple hats is part of the job. I handle I.T., graphic design, development, product management, and online marketing for my company.
So that's who we are. If you like the blog, we'd love to hear from you in the comments. You can also send feedback to blog@LessAnnoyingSoftware.com. Thanks for stopping by!
Tags: PSA Sunday, August 23rd, 2009
By Tyler King
One of the keys to staying successful if you work with technology is the ability to predict what tools people will need in the future before anyone else does. There are lots of people that are very rich right now just because they were among the first to realize how important the Internet would be.
So what's the next big thing? Well, obviously I don't really know (no one does) but there are a few very clear trends that I think will shape how we use technology in the future.
#1 - All data is the same
People are starting to realize that all different types of data work in the same way. TV, cell phones, land lines and internet should all be powered by one massive data pipe.
#2 - All hardware is the same
Many people still think that cell phones are fundamentally different from desktop computers, but the line between the two grows increasingly blurry. It's just a matter of time before people realize that cell phones, video game consoles, laptops and desktops are all the same basic device. They are all computers. It's that simple.
Neither of these two ideas are particularly insightful or useful by themselves, but there's a lot you can take away if you take this a step further. For example, you can look at the types of services that some companies offer and tell that they aren't ready for the future of technology.
The same way American car companies spent the past 20 years setting themselves up for complete irrelevance, I think cell phone and cable companies are demonstrating absolutely no willingness to adapt and survive during the next wave of technological change. Text messages still cost money even when phones have unlimited data plans. I still can't pay to watch only the tv channels that I want (I don't need 260 channels about fishing).
Because of the inaction by many established companies, there will be a huge opportunity for third parties to come in and slowly take over these industries. Hulu and Google Voice are both great examples of services poised to make traditional media and telecom companies worthless.
It's hard to predict what we can do right now to prepare for this transition, but I think that if you keep these two trends in mind whenever you're making important decisions, you'll be miles ahead of the competition.
Tags: Technology Monday, August 24th, 2009
By Tyler King
I'm going to beat a lot of themes to death on this blog. This post introduces one of these themes.
The whole point of this blog is to talk about how we can make software less annoying. You can't solve a problem until you've identified its causes, so a lot of the discussion will be about what causes existing software to be annoying. Today's topic is probably the #1 reason a lot of software sucks: inertia.
20 years ago, programmers didn't have any idea what computers would turn into. 20 years ago, computers were nothing more than a way to simplify basic tasks. Mail became email. Filing cabinets became your computer's file browser, and buttons in real life became buttons on a computer screen.
No one thought of computers as an entirely new way of interacting with information, which meant that no one thought of trying new systems and user interfaces. It turns out that email shouldn't actually model snail mail and folders aren't a good way to organize data. The problem is, it's too late for a lot of people.
There is so much inertia from the past 20 years that most computer users (and the developers themselves) simply can't change the way they view basic tasks like organizing files. Most tech-savvy people recognize that folders are out-dated and inefficient. Labels (or tags) make way more sense. But to someone that's been putting files in folders for the past couple of decades, folders seem familiar and that's all that matters.
Here's another example: you know how just about every computer has some sort of menu or application launcher running across the bottom of the screen? Have you ever considered how much more sense it would make to put that bar along one of the sides of the screen instead? Most computer monitors are wider than they are tall, and having a vertical start menu allows for several times more options to be visible at once. It's my opinion that basically everyone should switch to a vertical start menu, but I'm guessing that nobody reading this will actually make the change just because it's not what you're used to.
There are countless examples of the overall user experience being held back because years ago designers made some decisions that simply don't make sense any more. Unfortunately, the only real solution is for software developers to start making decisions that the customers won't like at first. It's a difficult thing to do since the customers are obviously the reason we developers stay in business, but we can't just keep sitting on the same mistakes from the past.
Tuesday, August 25th, 2009
By Tyler King
Since we're still in the early days of Less Annoying Software, the business model is still a little up in the air. We've got a pretty good idea of what we want to do, but there are a few things standing in the way.
First, what is it that we're trying to do? Well, the main problem I see with technology right now is that people just aren't using the right tools because they don't know what the right tools are. For example, I've met tons of sales people that don't use a CRM (Customer Relationship Manager). This is the equivalent of an accountant that doesn't use a calculator. It's needlessly handicapping yourself.
I'd say that at least half of the people working in America today fail to use basic software that could either save them significant amounts of time, or increase their earnings dramatically. One of the goals of Less Annoying Software is to help people identify the areas in which software could improve their lives and help them implement a solution. We also hope to build our own suite of software to fill in the gaps.
This all means that our target audience is made up of people that aren't currently using the right software. The problem here is, how can we find these people? If we start making a project management tool, it's assumed that people will find the product when they're looking for information on project management software.
But why would people search for software that they're not aware of? How do we reach an audience that by definition is oblivious to our very existence? The strategy right now is to approach small companies. Anyone running a company quickly understands the need for a solid I.T. foundation, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they know where to start.
My guess is that we'll run through a few different ideas before finally figuring out how to reach our customers. In the meantime, I'll be blogging all about it both for your benefit and for mine. Hopefully the problems we run into and overcome can somehow relate to decisions in your own business life. And hey, maybe a reader will think of something I missed. If that reader is you, hit us up in the comments with your great ideas.
Wednesday, August 26th, 2009
By Tyler King
One of my first projects at Less Annoying Software is to build a system we can use to track the visitors to this website. That's right, I'm spying on you right now.
In case you don't know, most websites use tools to track all your online activity. This data is called "analytics" and using the information, website creators can make intelligent design decisions based on the actions of their visitors. For example, an online store might notice that lots of people leave their site from the "create an account" screen during checkout. They might respond by changing the order of the checkout screens to increase conversions.
Analytics are generally all about trends and high-level data. For companies with millions of visitors per month, it's impossible to pay attention to the actions of any one visitor, so it's common to summarize the results with various statistical categories. One of these categories is called the "Bounce Rate" and it measures the percentage of people that come to your site and immediately leave without viewing any additional pages. There are all kinds of aggregates like that in the analytics world.
Because that's how big companies need to view their data, that's how most analytics tools display data. Google Analytics seems to be the most popular tool for tracking website activity and it really is a great service, but it's clearly not meant for small companies. That's because small companies don't have millions of visitors per month so they can't rely on the aggregate information the same way a company like Google can.
For example, because we only launched this website a week ago, we are only getting about four visitors per day. Measuring bounce rate isn't particularly important when you only have four visitors. With low-traffic websites, you want to be able to see exactly what pages each visitor looked at and in what order. At this point, every single hit generated by search engines is incredibly important to us.
Additionally, many companies don't necessarily need to work well with high-level data. Amazon must process millions of transactions per month which means they can't really afford to care about the specifics of each one. Less Annoying Software, on the other hand, might only need one customer per month in order to be hugely successful. This is both because we currently only have two people to pay and because each job could potentially be worth tens of thousands of dollars or more. This means that even if we end up with serious traffic, we still are focused on finding the hits from the perfect customers and we can ignore the rest.
I encourage anyone with a website to use a tool like Google Analytics to track general information about the effectiveness of their website. However, if you can afford to consider each potential client individually, you'd be doing yourself a huge favor by adopting a more granular system also. When I get my analytics system working, I'll probably put up a screenshot demo and make the code available to anyone that wants to give it a try.
Tags: Analytics
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About this blog
This is a blog for small businesses interested in how they can better use technology. Most tech
is targetted at either individual consumers or huge corporations. We'll help you find the tools
that are powerful enough to help run your business, but simple enough that you won't need an I.T.
team to use them.
There are two main writers on the Less Annoying Blog: Tyler has worked on the tech side of several small businesses and knows first hand what the little guys need, and don't need. Bracken is finishing up a PhD at MIT and he's always experimenting with any new software he can get his hands on. We also run an online customer manager tool called Less Annoying Software which was created specifically for small businesses to track all their customer activity.
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interested in reading about a particular topic, let us know. We're also always on the lookout for
new software and tools to try out (and review), so feel free to forward information on any new
tech you'd like us to write about.
You can reach us at blog@LessAnnoyingSoftware.com
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