If you have been following us, you’d know by now that we focus a lot on being ‘easy’. And if you’ve tried Creately, seen the video or gone through our list of features, you’ll know Creately is a feature-rich application. We have powerful features that are ahead of most other products in our market.
And yet, we only speak of easy. Not of our endless list of features. Why? because we believe all those features exist for the sole purpose of making the process of diagramming & design ‘easy’.
Easy does not stop at building an intuitive UI. It becomes ‘easy’ is when you consider what the user is trying to do and your application makes it easier for that goal to be achieved.
Lets take an example. Nick wants to redesign his office computer network. So he needs to
- Map out the current network structure
- Plan the future structure
- Get the rest of the IT team involved, gather ideas and feedback
- Get approvals
- Implement the network
- Maintain it over the next year and then again start planning for the next upgrade.
So when we mean easy, we look at the whole process.
Here, the diagram is the central artifact. A diagram is drawn in steps 1 and 2. So we focus on making drawing network diagrams easy. Large number of nodes, typically belong in groups. So collapsible groups – Check.
Also the diagram is about a real situation. A situation rich with data and information that needs to be referred to over and over again. So objects need to have attached data like IP addresses etc. Check.
Involves a team, so collaboration is a must. Check.
Maintaining it over a period of time means frequent updates. Multiple revisions – Check.
Overall, small mistakes in planning cost a lot in hardware. So some simple validation to tell you when you run out of ports on your switches help in the planning stages. – Check.
That’s just a snapshot of how we think about a specific use case. We start at drawing and from there we visit each step and evaluate how we can make that visually driven task easier and more intuitive.
With our KObject technology and a contextual UI, we are able to do this for many types of diagrams in different disciplines.
So now that we are nearing the public release of Creately, are we done? Not at all.
We’ll keep going up the use case ladder to higher order user goals that are centered around diagrams and visuals. And we will find ways to make things easy. That may mean complex functionality that shows only when its required, new KObjects or just a small amendment like a tooltip.
If we’ve learned one thing with Creately, is that ‘easy’ is not easy to do. But when you get it, it wins you die-hard fans. Fingers crossed!
PS – Have any suggestions on how we can use KObject technology to help the work you do in your field easier? Write to us or suggestion it on our Community Support Site.
Image: spackletoe
