Small business owners care about software design

The market was, and still is, flooded with hundreds of scheduling solutions. Our assessment a few years ago was that many of the systems were full of features, but most of them were quite ugly to look at and clunky to use.

“Robot vomit” was a term we heard used. That seemed apt.

But maybe only we were sensitive to ugly software because we’re software designers ourselves? Perhaps, owners of small businesses like salons, clinics, trainers, tutors etc aren’t fussed about this stuff? For all we knew, they are quite happy looking past the hideous user interfaces as they get on with their busy schedules for the day?

Thankfully this was not true.

Overwhelmingly it is proving to be the case that small business owners do care and appreciate good software design, clean interfaces and a solid user experience. Even those who will admit they are not the most tech savvy.

One of the first owners we tested this out with was Renata from Wax Etc. who was part of our beta group in 2012. It was clear immediately that the look and feel of Timely appealed to Renata and we’ve loved having her as a vocal supporter of Timely ever since.

So what have we learnt? Don’t underestimate small business owners and their appetite for a quality software experience. The bar is being raised by a number of software vendors. Particularly in the SaaS space where there are some very nice small business apps emerging. There’s no place for robot vomit in software these days.

What are the best-designed software apps that you’ve used?