Rory's application is now in production and he has been responding to user issues and feedback. In my experience this period can be the most fruitful in the development process. This is the time when very small adjustments could have large impacts on the usefulness of the application. It is often only when users start to use an application that they really appreciate how it can make their job easier. It is then that they start making comments like: "It would be great if I could see this information in that screen".

An example: I built a stock control system for a purchasing team. The system allowed users to track the purchasing and selling of equipment, and replaced a shared Excel spreadsheet. The users liked the system, but it was a month into using it when one of them said: "It would be great if we had an easy way of viewing a list of all the ordered kit that we are expecting to arrive this week". An hour later, there was a link on the main screen that took the users to just such a listing. In fact, there were three links one to show last week's expected deliveries, one to the the present week's, and another to next week's. Those three links became three of the most used links in the application. In one step I had made it much easier for users to see what they should be expecting to come in through the door. I thought I had already provided tools to give all the views a user would use, but I had missed the combination of stock on order and delivery in the current week. The users never before had such a simple way of viewing this information, and had also not imagined it was possible, and therefore had not asked for it when the system was specified.

This is one example, but it has been a common one for me. The key point is that the best way to improve the user experience is for you to keep an open communication with the users. Keep listening to your users. They are the source of your most productive modifications.