The missing connection
I love seeing people use the software I produced. I love immediate and direct feedback. It’s very satisfying to see how a certain feature makes someone else’s live easier.
This is why I enjoy writing company-internal software tools, for example. I can work with the users to create and improve the application. I can see my colleagues use it and can get feedback right away.
When the feedback is negative, I can usually fix it pretty quickly. And, it’s interesting to learn why a certain feature was unclear to them or not that great in the first place. When it’s positive, well, it just makes me happy and gives me confirmation.
Being in the same room gives me the ability to watch over their shoulders from time to time. And when I do, I almost always notice something that I can improve or add, to make their jobs less tedious. Sometimes, even trivial tweaks can go a long way.
This direct connection makes it fun and very efficient to create and improve software.
Unfortunately, this direct connection has always been missing when I was working on the software my company actually sold. So far, customer feedback was usually brief, generic and indirect. And I have never seen a single one of our customers use the software we produced.