As a software development company that could be located anywhere in the U.S., people often wonder why we are based in the state of New York. The reasoning goes beyond technology and has an impact on why we produce more usable—and therefore more successful—software applications.
Diversity in business knowledge is the key
Understanding business is one of the main requirements to building successful applications for businesses, and successful products or service that businesses can sell to consumers. According to Business Insider, the 100 most exciting startups in the New York area in 2016 were involved in incredibly diverse industries such as artificial intelligence, home-delivered canine treats, state-of-the-art agriculture, connected car platforms, financial technology, big data, men’s grooming, and food (many home-delivered kits, and one that even highlights insects as ingredients).
And the New York area is a great place to build a technology company. We have strong engineering schools on Long Island, in New York City, and in nearby New Jersey and Connecticut. Couple that with the broad cultural diversity of the area—another report from Business Insider cited that Queens, New York has more languages spoken in the borough than any other place in the world (more than 800)—and you get a talented, industry-diverse, and multicultural employment base, with exposure to the whole world via our global economic environment.
How diversity of experience helps usability in software development
When developing a software application, especially one that is a product meant to address a broad audience of customers, we stress the importance of usability. We don’t just write code, we want your application to be relevant to your users. We employ people with diverse industry and creative backgrounds—artists, designers, and writers for example—alongside our programming and software design staff, to develop successful applications. Without the right mix of visual creativity, user experience knowledge, and software design, you can’t make an application that’s successful.
Software usability is a big part of the application development process, but many companies don’t bother to put the time into discovering what their customers really want, or how they will use it. We focus not only on the usability aspect, but on building the right teams to develop applications.
Any serious application development effort requires a multidisciplinary team, and in New York, the talent pool is both multidisciplinary and multicultural, providing perspectives and insights into diverse areas that we can apply to building your application.
So next time you think of New York as the food, financial, or fashion mecca of the US, think instead about how the diversity of our environment can truly be beneficial in developing a software application that your users will relate to and want to use.
