Animal establishment boarding programs

realspeed

realspeed

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Bazza
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We have a problem in the animal boarding industry, there are so many computer programmers that go steaming ahead on developing a program for booking recording etc, and produce a program that looks fantastic, with loads of different pages,, stacks of colour etc etc. Unfortunately none have ever bothered to ask the end user what they want and is easy to use.

For example should an animal go sick and you need instant infomation on the animal, owner,vet ,adresses, telephone numbers and the like. With all programs out there you have to wade through page after page to get what you want.

Luckily I do have an old DOS program which I use which gives out all the revelant information on one page such as above and a lot more. But is no longer for sale

I have asked one person who produce a program to come and visit me to show her what is really needed but she refused on the basis that she programmed the program and in her eyes it was great. When asked who she consulted the reply was, no one,

I just cannot see how anyone can produce a program like this without consulting the end user first. What an oppertunity for any programmer to get a really good program up and working for windows/Vista/Mac. It is an open market with useless competition at the moment. I would only be too willing to show what is REALLY needed without all the fancy work.

Most are programms are from the USA who have a different way of doing things and not really any good for over here.

Realspeed
 
Don't blame the programmer. User interface design is separate from programming. Sounds like everyone in the process got this wrong. How many people were involved in the project in total? Did no one put together a team? Didn't anyone ask who was going to actually design the software first? No feasibility studies? Requirement specs? Was there a testing phase?

Sounds like a perfect example of how not to develop software.
 
realspeed said:
We have a problem in the animal boarding industry, there are so many computer programmers that go steaming ahead on developing a program for booking recording etc, and produce a program that looks fantastic, with loads of different pages,, stacks of colour etc etc. Unfortunately none have ever bothered to ask the end user what they want and is easy to use.

For example should an animal go sick and you need instant infomation on the animal, owner,vet ,adresses, telephone numbers and the like. With all programs out there you have to wade through page after page to get what you want.

Luckily I do have an old DOS program which I use which gives out all the revelant information on one page such as above and a lot more. But is no longer for sale

I have asked one person who produce a program to come and visit me to show her what is really needed but she refused on the basis that she programmed the program and in her eyes it was great. When asked who she consulted the reply was, no one,

I just cannot see how anyone can produce a program like this without consulting the end user first. What an oppertunity for any programmer to get a really good program up and working for windows/Vista/Mac. It is an open market with useless competition at the moment. I would only be too willing to show what is REALLY needed without all the fancy work.

Most are programms are from the USA who have a different way of doing things and not really any good for over here.

Realspeed
Click to expand...

We have just invested in a new garage management system. We could have spent many thousands [10+], but we didn't because with some research we found one that does exactly what we want, one click shows ALL the customer [dog if you like] details, one more shows all their car details, every car they have had with us - in other words, the really relevent information is immediate and the less relevent is what requires more clicking. This system would suit your needs perfectly with some adaptations [it of course has bookings etc], but sadly, its developed by one person [plus an admin lady] and that is the problem, the bigger the company gets, the more developers they have, it seems the more expensive and less user friendly the resulting software often seems to be if my searches of other more expensive systems is anything to go by :bonk:
 
KJ

I don't know the anser to your question, all I do know is the having searched and downloaded different trial programs none come even close to what an end user requires.

In my industry's case it's not rocket science for programmers (usually one man businesses is my guess) to actually discuss what end users would like with the end user.

I cannot think offhand of any product where research is not carried out before a product is launched

The only exception is the one I use.

A pal of mine, myself and the programmer went into deep discussions as to what was wanted ,he even visited several times, to get his program correct.
Yes it was altered about 6/8 times as various thoughts ideas were hammered out. We gave the programmer detail of what we wanted on the from page for quick reference, other various bits and pieces and it works perfectly.

Unfortunately being DOS based it will work on programs up to but not including Vista or Mac which is why I have to stay with windows XP.

Realspeed
 
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