Posted by
Paul Lefebvre in
Software Development
Mar 28th, 2008 |
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For your users, simple means one thing: make it easy to use. This can mean a lot of things to different people but the key thing to keep in mind is that your software should be approachable.
Your users don’t want to read manuals or go to training in order to effectively use your software. They want to just figure it out as they use it. This means your software needs to respect them. It should be easy for them to learn how to use it. Most importantly, it should be easy for them to correct any mistakes they will make.
Because, rest assured, your users will make mistakes. When the user...
Posted by
Paul Lefebvre in
Software Development
Mar 23rd, 2008 |
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My presentation on Software Made Simple during the REAL World 2008 keynote was apparently quite popular with conference-goers. I had countless people come up to me in the days after commenting on how much they enjoyed it and how it made them rethink how they were doing some things.
So I thought it might be a good idea to capture this presentation as a series of blog posts. The presentation consisted of 10 slides and I’ll write about each one over the course of the next 10 days or so.
Up first is “Simple Sells”, so be sure to tune in tomorrow…
Posted by
Paul Lefebvre in
Software Business
Mar 15th, 2008 |
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On My Own
It was a hectic last week of work at AMS Services. I was in a lot of meetings as people tried to “pick my brain” one last time. My last day was Friday (3/14), so now I’m officially on my own.
As I mentioned in my original Leaving the Day Job post, we’re parting on good terms. In fact, we just signed a contract for some consulting work for the next few months. In particular, I’ll be helping them build out their community web site, virtualization farm and continue with Team Foundation Server administration.
REAL World
Next week is REAL World, so I’m...
Posted by
Paul Lefebvre in
Software Business
Mar 12th, 2008 |
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Jeff Atwood, who writes one of my favorite blogs, Coding Horror (or as we say here in Maine, Coding Horrah) just wrote a post today about leaving his day job to focus on his own company: Choosing Your Own Adventure
Jeff writes way, way better than I do (for example, he would never write “way, way better”), but his post describes a lot of the feelings I had about my decision to leave my job to work for LogicalVue full-time. Definitely read it and if you don’t already, subscribe to his blog feed.
Congrats, Jeff. All the best.
Posted by
Paul Lefebvre in
Macintosh
Mar 9th, 2008 |
4 Comments
For the last couple years I’ve been using my personal 20″ iMac Core Duo as my work computer. Lately I’ve been needing something more portable so I’ve been keeping an eye on the MacBook Pro. With my transition to work for LogicalVue full-time, I wanted to have a dedicated work computer. And coincidently, Apple announced new MacBook Pros on February 26th.
I had been waiting for the new MacBook Pros to be announced so that I could weigh the new features against the prices for refurbished models. With the announcement of the new models, the price of a refurbished 2.4Ghz...
Posted by
Paul Lefebvre in
Software Business
Mar 2nd, 2008 |
4 Comments
Wow! I want to thank everyone for their kind words of encouragement. It’s now been a week since I’ve officially made this decision and one of the most frequent questions I’ve been getting is “what are you going to do for health benefits?” Certainly health care benefits are a big concern, at least in the United States, so it’s an important question.
For my purposes, I have several options which my wife and I are considering. Since my wife works part-time right now, we might be able to go with the health care plan of her employer. This would probably be the...
