Poll: Do you actually use the product you are working on?
Many of us are working on their own projects, side projects or for some companies. And we all know that the best way is to develop/work on a product that we also need/use (eat your own dog food).
Do you need/use it (other than for testing purposes) or are you just developing a product for the sake of doing something?
Feel free to comment what's the product :)
225 comments
[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 271 ms ] threadI'm building a wafer stepper. That's a machine that's used to make chips and LEDs. We're building the very first one of its kind now. I'm not sure what it'll sell for, but it's not something you typically get together on Kickstarter. I guess I'd be using it if I owned a semicon foundry or something.
Admittedly, this means that my description of what the machine does was cutting some corners. Ridiculously many, actually, but ok :)
...I cannot begin to imagine what's involved in vibration control.
http://www.optodyne.com/opnew5/TecArt/tech13.pdf
The idea that you should "eat your own dogfood" doesn't make a lot of sense if the product is (to draw from my personal experience) an x-ray machine, mechanical respirator, semiconductor metrology tool or electron microscope.
http://iknowthestory.shutup
I spend my days working on an ERP system. Apart from entering my weekly timesheet and the occasional expense claim, I don't use the system. If I wanted to enter payments and reconcile bank accounts, I would have become an accountant.
However, I use my side project http://www.3dprintingpricecheck.com quite frequently for working on my other side project which involves making 3D-printed geographical models (http://www.printablegeography.com).
Thinking about the larger issue, I think It's actually somewhat rare for professionals to consume their own "product". Lawyers, for example, are often discouraged from doing so.
We're building a survey app for dentists to give to their patients.
We also have a dental practice management app.
And an practice management education tool.
I've also worked on monitoring apps used by electricity companies.
I can continue, but this should do. Anecdotal, fair enough, but I'm using them to paint a concept.
Our QA process is relying on it.
We're:
- automatically checking our most critical features every time our code changes in our QA environment
- monitoring the end user experience on production environment using the same automated tests every minute
- creating and maintaining the tests with our tool
- getting live feedback to our development team's flowdock chat through our own APIs
But to be honest, the reason we built Upptalk was not because we needed VOIP telephony, but that we were incensed with habitual overcharging and roaming charges.
As I've been developing it I started using it to sync stuff, access machines remotely, etc.
I can't say I use it daily, but surely more than 1/week. My interests are tech and quite specific, and HN is better from that point of view, but for general news I use Theneeds. I'm also a person that doesn't post/like/share too much (neither on HN, Theneeds, Twitter, Facebook...).
My co-founders however use it daily. It's their primary source of news & things to share. Sometimes, we also use it to stream the "hot" music at home ;) Moreover, we recently added to the team a couple of "enthusiastic"... pretty cool (and satisfactory) imho!
Once I finish my new counterpick feature (user based) I'll use it even more to see what the Hivemind thinks about God counterpicks.
Outside of software for developers and IT I suspect the majority of companies don't use their own software, which is counter to what most people here believe.
we aren't in the industry so don't use it ourselves at all but we think this is better as we can actually try to move the industry forward with best practices from other industries versus sticking to old ways and status quos that might not be the best way, it was just the way people have always done it.
of course we make quite a bit of features/functionality directly from user feedback.
I have been working on form building solutions since over a year. For the first 6 months or so, I made custom forms when I needed them. Lately, I've started using my own product, simply out of need. It's surprising how much you learn when you are a genuine consumer of your own product.
We dogfood it all the way, so definitely every day for our own needs. We analyze the performance, event breakdown, engagement stats, funnels, and everything about our analytics dashboard within our own analytics dashboard. Traditionally we do analytics/marketing for the mobile space, but it works great for web as well.
We also have a couple of people on the mobile team who launched an iPhone app for tracking the Boston subway: http://proximitapp.com/. They of course use Localytics for their analytics and in-app and push marketing and gave us great feedback.
We've learned a ton from real-world use of our app in both contexts. Dogfooding really is invaluable for us.
http://boxmydownloads.com
In retrospect, finding a product I would be able to truly benefit from was really a very good idea - I believe it really helps me daily to keep the level of persistence which is required to grow a product (both sales-wise and from a benefits/features point of view).
My personal code projects? They're not products, they're tools: they get written to solve specific problems or to do specific tasks. Sometimes only once, usually a few times, then they are never touched again.
My personal code projects? They're not products, they're tools: they get written to solve specific problems or to do specific tasks. Sometimes only once, usually a few times, then they are never touched again.