To improve their products, technology providers need detailed, thoughtful feedback from users of their technology. Unfortunately, this feedback is often difficult to obtain. Typical users aren’t very motivated to provide detailed feedback; they’re interested in getting their product finished. When they run into a problem, they find the most expedient work-around and move on. They don’t have time to fully explore, document, and report on the problems that hinder their productivity, or to share their detailed ideas on how the product could be improved.
To obtain the feedback they need to guide improvements to their products, technology providers need a set of knowledgeable users who can focus on performing an evaluation. And these users should have an independent perspective, free from the biases inevitably found within the vendor’s organization. Recently BDTI was contacted by a processor vendor with a need to evaluate its suite of DSP software development tools in order to help guide its ongoing investments in the tools. Working with the vendor, BDTI was able to deliver a thorough assessment of the strengths, weaknesses, and overall user experience of its tool suite compared to the tools of one of its competitors.
As a first step, a BDTI engineer with many years of experience as a DSP application developer and development manager approached the tools the way a typical user would, by installing the tools, getting a simple program to run, and experimenting with the example programs provided. This allowed the engineer to get a feel for the “out-of-box” experience of the end user. Next, BDTI focused on the implementation of a representative software development project. For this purpose, the BDTI Communications Benchmark (OFDM)™ was chosen, because it was large enough to utilize the complete tool suite in a meaningful way and yet small enough to be completed in a reasonable timeframe. BDTI first ported the program to the target processor using the tools. Then BDTI profiled the program’s performance and experimented with various automatic and manual optimizations, much as typical users of the tools would do.
Making detailed notes throughout the project, BDTI evaluated the tools’ ease of use, speed, documentation, technical support, and other aspects in relation to the competitor’s tools. Problems encountered along the way were also thoroughly documented. In one instance, a relatively straightforward modification of the code resulted in an error that was not addressed in the documentation. The solution was eventually found by searching through example code for a similar code fragment.
BDTI’s final report provided a comprehensive evaluation of the tool chain, with detailed documentation of problems encountered and suggestions for improvement. The vendor was able to obtain a clear view of its strengths and weaknesses relative to its competitor and gain a clearer picture of how to improve the experience of its end users, from opening the box to finished product. To learn how BDTI can help your signal processing technology, contact Jeremy Giddings at +1 (925) 954 1411 or giddings@BDTI.com.
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