Disclaimer — I write this as a software user, not a developer.
After the speech “Every detail matter”, I wanted to share some anecdotal experience on quality of software.
When I have to determine quality of software, I don’t have a lot of criteria on which to judge it. List of features and number of crashes plays part in decision, but if basics are covered and it is stable, then how do I choose? A quick list of things, that I believe matter:
- indicator of activities on longer operations;
- polished, consistent UI;
- proper spelling and grammar;
- if translated, translated fully.
Most of these things are covered in HIGs anyway, but my point essentially is — even if software is solid but looks flimsy, it will seem flimsy.
These should be extremely obvious points but they clearly aren’t. One of the most annoying things is trying to launch an app and being given no feedback. While turning the pointer into a spinner may not be ideal I need some kind of idea that something is happening. All too often I click on an icon, which exits the overview, and nothing happens. Obviously there was a failure at some part of the stack all I have to go on is the lack of said application opening.
The general state of translations could be improved every core app included a builtin way to submit changes. They needn’t be accepted immediately but a karma like system similar to bodhi would rapidly fix these problems.
Last regarding ui, consistency is very important but I’m not sure what polished means. I typically think of polish as a final step to improve finish. Assuming the app has a consistent ui, that really limits the amount of polish one can apply.
Me, whenever I’m explicitly doing a choice between software to evaluate them before testing myself, I always check the FAQ. If there are no questions, there are no users or no feedback, both are bad.
Then I check “common gotchas”. Bugtracker activity, open bugs, last release, do they bother writing a god release note or not? Are they speaking to the users?
These things are very important, especially when picking libraries or web applications.