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This Is All Your App Is: A Collection Of Tiny Details

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Re: This Is All Your App Is: A Collection Of Tiny Details

#21

Post by duncanj »

keithpeter wrote: post #18
Produce wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a cat and it still seems like an arbitrary change.

I am not a cat either, but I do live 52.5 degrees North and quite often visit 57.5 degrees North. Daylight saving is not arbitrary for daylight liking non-cats

But daylight saving occurs during the time when you already have more daylight than the vast majority of habitable landmass does. You aren't "saving" daylight at all during the daylight poor months when you're inside at work during the entire daylight period.

Re: This Is All Your App Is: A Collection Of Tiny Details

#22

Post by jroseattle »

I get where Jeff is going with this post, and I agree and disagree. It may seem like splitting hairs, but I find a big difference between details and decisions. My version: your app is a collection of decisions.

The details (and implementation) of an app flow from those decisions. Include or exclude a feature? That's a decision. Buttons on the left/right, top/bottom? Decision. Add a pluggable architecture? Decision.

Look at a rather successful product like the iPhone. Much of its success can be traced to getting lots of details right. But understanding what was going into the iPhone -- the decisions made about how to create it -- led to those details. Touchscreen, app store, glass cover, all of it were active decisions.

Executing details are absolutely critical, but making the decision of what to do (or not to do) is where it all starts.

Re: This Is All Your App Is: A Collection Of Tiny Details

#23

Post by rory096 »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #11
codeka wrote: post #4

> We never changed the actual feed schedule, but just changing the time for daylight savings was so incredibly awkward and contorted we had to summarize the steps from the manual on a separate piece of paper as a "cheat sheet" Not really related to the point, but should you be adjusting the time for daylight savings at all? I mean, the cats don't care about the arbitrary 24 hours we humans use to divide up the day, s…

If your cats sit on your head at 5am to remind you to feed them, then if your auto-feeder thinks 5am is another hour off, your cats will not. they will howl and sit on your head, only now its 4am. Arbitrary change or not, at 4 am cat on face always wins

Except the point with the 5am bit was that the cats no longer directly associate the author with food (and vice versa), so the cats don't sit on his face at all; they'll just get angry at the feeders.

Re: This Is All Your App Is: A Collection Of Tiny Details

#24

Post by hellerbarde »

jroseattle wrote: post #22

I get where Jeff is going with this post, and I agree and disagree. It may seem like splitting hairs, but I find a big difference between details and decisions. My version: your app is a collection of decisions. The details (and implementation) of an app flow from those decisions. Include or exclude a feature? That's a decision. Buttons on the left/right, top/bottom? Decision. Add a pluggable architecture? Decision.…

That is a very good point, coming from the developer's view.

I think that Jeff's point is more valid if you look at it from the customer's view.

Re: This Is All Your App Is: A Collection Of Tiny Details

#25

Post by astral303 »

mmahemoff wrote: post #14
nadam wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a marketing expert, but my reaction to this article was that it pretty much depends on what 'market phase' we are in. In a new market with no competitors what matters is that someone created an automatic cat feeder at all. In a more mature market with several competitors those small details matter more. In a very mature market maybe several competitors get the tiny details right, so maybe building a brand ma…

The product in the early phase was called a Dancing Bear in the book, "The Inmates are Running the Asylum". You don't need the bear to move like a professional dancer because "look at that, it's a bear ... and it's dancing!". The details start to matter when more dancing bears come on the scene.

+1. "The Inmates Are Running the Asylum" is an excellent book and a must must must read for anyone in software engineering. It will open your mind and give you a new perspective on software.

The dancing bear analogy is on the money. It's like early computers: "OMG, word processing! I can "delete" my typos! I can reformat my paragraph!" Today's computers: "it's hard for me to figure out how to reformat the paragraph. Next app!" Also, early computers: "the computer crashed, I should've saved!" Today's computers: "the damn computer should not have lost my data no matter what happened."

Re: This Is All Your App Is: A Collection Of Tiny Details

#27

Post by amirmc »

hellerbarde wrote: post #24
jroseattle wrote: post #22

I get where Jeff is going with this post, and I agree and disagree. It may seem like splitting hairs, but I find a big difference between details and decisions. My version: your app is a collection of decisions. The details (and implementation) of an app flow from those decisions. Include or exclude a feature? That's a decision. Buttons on the left/right, top/bottom? Decision. Add a pluggable architecture? Decision.…

That is a very good point, coming from the developer's view. I think that Jeff's point is more valid if you look at it from the customer's view.

And from the customer's point of view, the first product did the single most important thing properly. Feed the cats with minimal human input. That's still a decision on the creators' part i.e the creators could have sat down and bickered about colour options but they (presumably) took a decision to fix the customer's problem.

The fact that Jeff used the same feeders for five years is a testament to how well the original designers were able to address the core problem well enough.

Edit: They also functioned well enough that he bought the updated version on faith.

Re: This Is All Your App Is: A Collection Of Tiny Details

#28

Post by MortenK »

Today I was designing wireframes for a web application, using a little prototyping app called Balsamiq mockups. It is a little, very focused application, and the detail level is nothing short of amazing. Typing a few letters and hitting enter will create a new control and add it to the canvas, already focused and ready for positioning. Creating a text paragraph and then writing the word lorem, will automatically create 3 lines of lorem ipsum text. There is a filterable icon gallery. One click export to PNG, and all other kinds of little nuggets.

I agree with Jeff Atwood, that it's those little details that makes makes an app enjoyable, where before it might have been merely tolerable.

Re: This Is All Your App Is: A Collection Of Tiny Details

#29

Post by codinghorror »

danielmiller wrote: post #3

Hold on a second, Jeff! > Your software, your product, is nothing more than a collection of tiny details. If you don't obsess over all those details, if you think it's OK to concentrate on the "important" parts and continue to ignore the other umpteen dozen tiny little ways your product annoys the people who use it on a daily basis – you're not creating great software. Someone else is. I think the true moral of his s…

Until they delighted me, by addressing all the niggling details that I didn't like about the old version of the feeder.

At which point I voluntarily wrote a blog post that described how wonderful their feeders are, and how thoughtful the revised product was, to over a hundred thousand people.

So which kind of product do you want to be?

Re: This Is All Your App Is: A Collection Of Tiny Details

#30

Post by keithpeter »

duncanj wrote: post #21
keithpeter wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a cat either, but I do live 52.5 degrees North and quite often visit 57.5 degrees North. Daylight saving is not arbitrary for daylight liking non-cats

But daylight saving occurs during the time when you already have more daylight than the vast majority of habitable landmass does. You aren't "saving" daylight at all during the daylight poor months when you're inside at work during the entire daylight period.

Up here its British Summer Time and then just UT in the winter. The phrase 'daylight saving' is not used here.

http://www.polyomino.org.uk/british-time/

Besides, we have large windows.

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