Bad Signs: When non-tech people say “what am I looking at”

You can hope for the best. After 1.5 years of investment, you really cannot afford to rebuild.

Get launched, and sell You will have to support your product with extensive training so your clients understand what they are looking at.

The first time I looked at Adobe Photoshop, I was confused. The first time I used visual studio, I was even more confused. The first time I played with the stereo in my car, I was confused.

The bottom line is that if your product has value, your customers will learn to use it. I am putting a positive note on this, In the future you want to pay very close attention to the User experience in your product.

Many tech folks neglect the user experience. My team and I build all our projects by first determining its requirements and what it will do, then the complete user experience, and finally tie it together with the functionality and data storage requirments.

Putting the UI first forces you to focus on solving the use cases from a UI developers point of view. Also forces you to see the big picture.

The good news for you, is that you can sell what you have now, and use all of that for your market research.

By the way, First time I used facebook the Wall made no sense to me. Now, its second nature.

Still expect that your customers will learn. Also work on your presentation skills. You are intimate with your product, knowing all its details, your clients are not "YET"

BEST OF LUCK.

You need to immediately get a copy of Steve Krug's book "Don't Make Me Think". While the book is orriented towards web site design, 90% of what he says also applies to software design. Pay particular attention to useability and testing your customer's experience.

Once you have read the book and understand his message, go back and locate some old contacts in your industry. Talk to them and get several (not just one) to take a look at your software. Follow the guidelines from Krug's book on useability testing. Watch what they do with your software. That will tell you whether your software is ready for release or revision.

Don't pay any attention to people's opinions of your software if they are not in your industry niche.

I'm learning quickly that people have the attention spans of gold fish and if they can't figure out what your website is within 5 seconds of hitting your page, they're going to blame you in the form of criticism for having a cryptic product.

This isn't something you can change, but rather, be aware that you'll need to spend some time on usability and have a range of people in your target demographic touching your prototype on a regular basis. Get feedback from them, don't ever explain yourself or take it personally, just thank them for their thoughts and continue to develop based on that information.

In short, what you received from these people that you asked is almost guaranteed to be white noise with no signal content.

The bitter but unvarnished truth - which I have found myself - is that "reviews" by generic people about a topic of moderate complexity - and even college educated people who have some literacy about them - and even those people that you would reasonably consider "on your side" - is almost always unproductive.

Even my own friends will adamantly and absolutely refuse to think, focus on the proposition, clear their minds, and/or put their minds in a particular frame. People are mentally lazy. Even most friends. Even most professionals. Even professionals that you believe should know something.

Most people can't review anything meaningfully and don't understand how to do this nor understand why they should do this.

This is true even for reviewing a stupid little resume. I have found it tough to get "friends" to focus on one stupid printed page.

Reviewing a product for a specific vertical market? "Fuggedaboutit".

So don't beat yourself up too much. I've learned the hard way that this way lies madness.

And do what Gary said. I even like his advice to just read the book. He's not recommending that you apply it. He's assuming that you will do that as needed when needed. I really like that.

It is well known idea, that if you tell the people who are your potential customers a brief description of your future product and they say - "that's good", "interesting", then your idea might not be as good as you think. But if they scream - "Where can I get one?", "How can I try it out?" - then you can potentially have a bestseller.

So go and tell about your software to those people who can possibly be your customer, not to those random people who doesn't care and see their reaction!