[Software] Why Software Should Be More Humanlike

[#Hassan.]

 

For many of us, our experience with software is that it can often be rigid and cold. And, truth be told, most software is. But some of the better software companies are building today embraces human traits in order to be warmer to users and adapt to their needs.

Over my 30-plus years of software development experience, I have identified four human service-minded traits you can use to assess any software product. Individually, each of these traits helps create a positive customer experience. In combination, I believe they provide a world-class innovative platform capable of disrupting any industry. 

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Helpful

A helpful person selflessly gives their time to provide assistance when needed. They provide useful advice. They are intentionally focused on the needs of others, and perhaps most importantly, they ask for genuine feedback to make sure they are, in fact, being helpful. 

It’s easy to imagine software that helps you perform a specific job or task, like a simple to-do list with reminders. It helps you in a way that is right for you. It’s available on a device that is handy when and where you need the help.

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In order to produce useful software, an organization must know their customers’ Jobs to Be Done, as outlined in the book by Stephen Wunker, Jessica Wattman and David Farber. But the jobs of our users are never about function alone — there are powerful social and emotional dimensions to explore as well. Understanding these dimensions requires an investment in strategic planning and user research in order to achieve true product-market fit.

Beautiful

A beautiful human is more than just a pretty face. They are fun to be around and they don’t deplete your energy by complaining. Indeed, they spark joy.

Similarly, beautiful software products elicit delight and offer a frictionless experience so users don’t have to think hard. These products work and feel like tools that fit perfectly in our hands. They are easy to use, as though they were designed specifically for us. And they are hyper-intuitive, like a best friend who knows what we’re thinking before we even think it.

To produce beautiful software, forward-leaning teams embrace human-centered design. They innovate continuously by running frequent design sprint workshops, building prototypes and testing hypotheses. They fall in love with the problem they’re trying to solve rather than their current solution to that problem.

Rugged

When a person is rugged, they are strong, adaptable and capable of handling any situation. They tend to prefer outdoor activities where they can exercise their speed, strength and dexterity. They might appear a little rough around the edges — unless they’re beautiful too.

Software that is rugged is secure, reliable and easily maintainable. When your customers need it, it’s there. It’s available and waiting for orders. Like a well-trained soldier, it’s ready for anything and knows how to react when worst-case scenarios arise. If your software is rugged, your customers can count on it, and they feel safe and secure using it. It fosters trust.

Product leaders striving to produce rugged software should invest in DevOps best practices, such as chaos engineering. They should embed quality and security assurance into the release process so that flaws and vulnerabilities are discovered long before they reach the customer. 

Caring

When someone truly cares, they do everything in their power to help. They abide by allowing your agenda to drive their agenda and your concerns to drive their concerns. When you need something, they rush to your assistance with all due haste.

Software is caring when it is frequently updated and maintained behind the scenes and without burdening the end user. New helpful features appear so regularly and seamlessly that you never know — or need to know — what version you’re running. It just works.

Caring software is made when your organization cares deeply enough to evolve and embrace more modern software design and development philosophies, like lean and agile thinking. Caring organizations produce incremental product improvements as frequently as several times per day. This allows them to better serve their customers and reap the rewards of faster feedback cycles. Fast feedback leads to faster learning, which ultimately leads to better customer service.

Summary

The world would be a better place if all software was helpful, beautiful, rugged and caring. Until then, there is a deafening cry from the user community for product owners to strive toward this ideal and commit more resources to the mission. As consumers continue to shift their loyalty toward brands with more modern products, there is a growing revenue opportunity for organizations that love to listen, learn and adapt.

If you realize you need to improve your game in one or more of these areas, you can get started by defining a clear problem statement for a challenge you want to tackle. Define the objectives for a small discovery phase. It’s important to think big and start small. Collaborate with your team to set measurable goals and decide on the approach that’s right for your team. Or, if you don’t have the right talent or culture internally, it might be a good time to bring in a third party to guide you. The next step is to define a phased roadmap. Break down your goals into a phased approach to produce quicker wins. Finally, plan how you will calculate ROI for the first phase so you can demonstrate to your stakeholders how this initiative will pay for itself. And don’t forget your users along the way. They’re the whole reason you’re here in the first place, right?

In 2011, Marc Andreessen published an article (paywall) in the Wall Street Journal saying that software is eating the world. Combine software with the power of human-centered design and no industry is safe from disruption. Without question, software is here to stay. And the more humanlike we can design our software, the better positioned we’ll be to succeed in the race for the most loyal and enthusiastic customers.