Integrity pertains to the character of the author and of the product. Personal integrity means honesty and uprightness. Consider advertising or journalism standards, paraphrased: never misinform, present factual evidence, cite references. Internal advertising appears in many forms, filling the inbox daily – dashboards, reports, presentations, and of course “see spreadsheet for details”, if not all-in-one. The reader has the right to draw their own conclusions. A good provider respects and encourages that.
Structural integrity means reliability. “Built to last” is a mantra of manufacturing and is the deserving goal of any project worth undertaking. Taking pride in the integrity of your work is not a requirement – it’s compensation. It begins with a long-term vision leading to obsolescence-resistant design, fault-proof engineering, skilled construction and rigorous quality testing. There will be defects, the goal is to catch them all in build-test iterations. Testing goes beyond intended features to anticipate unintended use, ensuring that it will work every time for diverse users.
Think about a product you use daily that you expect to work every time – your car. Every one of the thousands of parts in a car has a purpose, most of them you never see. When you buy a car, you take a test drive to see how it feels – performance per design is presumed. But way before that point, the maker checked that every part and subassembly performed its function and did not break under stress. Entire cars were destroyed in crash tests in order to design and test safety features that you expect never to use but would not buy without.
The quality and integrity of public products involves trust. Especially for something like a car, which can cause death, you rely on trust, backed by the legal and insurance systems and decades-long reputation. You don’t have that foundation when you are building a spreadsheet. Adoption is based on trust, and trust comes from a subjective threshold of experience. If a defect or design gap appears early, the user may never reach their threshold, but once they do, they will come to you for help rather than abandon your product. Your objective is to help them cross their threshold by removing all obstacles.
Trust grows organically, but needs some selling to germinate. This can be provided by video, demo, or built into the sheet, with sample data and help text to expose the more subtle features. Help should be unobtrusive, concise and easy to access. Most help is needed once, maybe more if the app is infrequently used. The ideal help is never needed, because the design is simple and intuitive. Elegance sells itself.
When you invest yourself in a project, you might even wish for help requests, because you love explaining and demonstrating your creative work. Be careful what you wish for. Plan from the start to make yourself dispensable. You do not want to be under the gun for embarrassing and expensive repair work once it’s in use. The goal is to make it as fault-proof and self-explanatory as possible.
This is a core principle of product development and change management: test, and test some more, and test again before you release it, and validate after release. This is your chance to get the consumer’s perspective, by being one. Use it, over and over again. Not only will you find and fix bugs but make improvements as well. Consider a production pilot to limit the risk until proven. Don’t rush to market. First impression is key.
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