Re: Rant... please let me help you fix the user interface

["Mike Starr" <mikestarr-techwr-l -at- writestarr -dot- com>]

First, there is no alternative development... as I said before there are 
three programmers and me. That's the extent of the company. Our only 
involvement with the parent is pretty much hands-off and they don't have 
their own development team because they don't do software at all. So there 
is no successor product... any development will be modification of this 
product.

The situation seems to be that we're getting close to having sold our 
product to as many of the potential customers in our niche as possible. The 
customers we haven't sold to are the ones who manage their business with a 
blackboard or slips of paper in the owner's pocket and who're fairly 
tech-averse. In other words, I think we've just about reached the plateau.

So, in order for us to be able to continue we need to move into an adjacent 
niche and it won't be hard to do that with some fairly simple changes to the 
product. Once we do that, we'll be able to target a whole new marketplace 
that's closely related to our current market niche.

At the moment, when I talk to my boss and the parent-company manager we 
report to, both acknowledge that we need to try to move into that 
marketplace but there doesn't seem to be any commitment to taking steps to 
getting us there. I'm inclined to believe that if we don't do something 
soon, we'll just wither on the vine.

Even though I'm there as a contractor with no actual stake in the outcome, I 
believe in the product and the potential of the expanded marketplace. I want 
to see it do well.

Mike
--
Mike Starr                            WriteStarr Information Services
Technical Writer   -   Online Help Developer   -    Website developer
Graphic Designer    -    Desktop Publisher   -       MS Office Expert
Phone: (262) 694-1028 - Tollfree: (877) 892-1028 - Fax:(262) 697-6334
Email: mike -at- writestarr -dot- com      -      Web: http://www.writestarr.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>
To: <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Sent: Sunday, March 25, 2007 12:07 PM
Subject: Re: Rant... please let me help you fix the user interface

> In that case, the real question is whether the company's
> management has any intention of expanding the existing
> user base for this product, or if there is some reason
> why they don't (for examples, the underlying tech has
> already been extracted for use in a successor product
> that is being developed by the parent company and this
> one is just being kep alive until its replacement comes
> out).  Does anybody else besides you see the "need to
> start selling this product into a different marketplace?"
>
> Gene Kim-Eng
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Mike Starr" <mikestarr-techwr-l -at- writestarr -dot- com>
>
>> Unfortunately, there'll never be a "major upgrade" to the software... 
>> it's
>> just continually maintained and tweaked.
>>
>> The main reason I'm so interested in fixing these things is because we
>> really need to start selling this product into a different marketplace, 
>> one
>> that's closely tied to our existing marketplace. But with luck, we get a
>> whole bunch of new users and if I get the user interface cleaned up we 
>> won't
>> be getting tech support calls from new users. The number of existing 
>> users
>> is fairly small and I'm confident any confusion brought about by changes 
>> to
>> the user interface would be easily managed. 

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