Mike Lee, an application developer involved with Delicious Library, Tap Tap Revenge, the Obama ’08 app, and Apple’s mobile store, recently offered advice to the attendees at the St. Louis Strange Loop 2011 conference. While wearing a Mariachi outfit, told an audience of developers to assume that their users are lazy, stupid, impatient and selfish. He went on to clarify, “People are not ignorant and apathetic, but they do not know and do not care about your product.”
Lee recommended making a video explaining why people should want your product early in the development process. He said that the best way to pick a platform for your software is to pick the platform you like. And he said that developers should test their apps as if they were their own arch nemeses. In addition, he advised that every product needs a good hook to capture the audience’s attention—like wearing a Mariachi costume to give a technical speech.
