Software is There for People

“Software is essential today. One perspective on it is not enough!” - Richard Seidl

As a tester, you are constantly confronted with software that does what it is supposed to do (i.e. implementation matches the requirement and test case) - but is somehow still rubbish. Too excessive, too complicated and simply not well thought out.
I wanted to bring my “favorite software” MS Teams into play, which has established itself as the gold standard in corporate and enterprise collaboration since the pandemic. And that’s not because it’s good software 😉

But there’s another piece of software in my stomach right now. Namely that of our camper van. A prime example of software without “digital design”. I’ve already been able to expand my “oh no” list, which I create for my presentations on good software. There are some basic mistakes:

• When driving, the ventilation sometimes comes on at full power in the living area
• Stupidly connected a second iPhone, now Carplay no longer works for either iPhone…or to put it another way: sometimes one iPhone works
• The mode that ensures that the car does not light up like an American Christmas tree when the door is opened when camping is not reliable. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t (workaround in a forum: the engine has to be running. Yes, of course).

Well, as a tester I can deal with that. But as a user, there are other things too:

• There are three control consoles and it is hardly clear what to set where
• The on-board computer including Carplay (when it works) takes a good minute to start up
• The settings for Wi-Fi, Esim and most functions are so unintuitive that even as a software engineer I sometimes have to draw up decision tables in order to recognize a system.

Shouldn’t really be rocket science, should it? And I’m sure everyone knows examples like this: the ticket machine (or the 100s of ticket apps), the self-service checkout in the supermarket, the ERP software in the office,… Software is for everyone. Not just for us techies. But we take this view far too rarely.

Good software is not error-free software. It is software that supports the user in their actions. And we can, no, we must always ask ourselves this question:

• What does software really need?
• What does the process look like from the user’s perspective?
• How can it perhaps be designed better?

Or, quite heretically: Can’t we even omit or expand functions? Caution: This statement can lead to gasps and emotional reactions in meetings!

So: Let’s make better software!