SeisWare: Geoscience Software Shaped By User Feedback

Geoscience software developed with the geoscientist in mind should enable customers to complete their workflows efficiently. The tech should also evolve as users’ needs change. Keeping a finger on the pulse of what users need and want in a geological and seismic interpretation software platform is essential.

“Rather than building for millions of generic users, SeisWare operates in a small niche,” says Alana Chin, Product Owner with SeisWare. “We’re building for a tighter-knit community and tend to have a direct line of communication with our client base.”

User feedback shouldn’t simply be an element of software maintenance and support. When collected and analyzed properly, this feedback can do far more than simply flag concerns or bugs that customers need the support team to address. Instead, it can help the company and development team better understand the user to create an exceptional product.

In this article on how SeisWare incorporates user feedback, we’ll explore:

• A fresh take on incorporating user feedback into software
• How customer feedback influences product development
• Building geoscience software for geoscientists
• The power of collaboration in software development

A fresh take on incorporating user feedback

Sometimes, software development is planned to meet the needs of a broad customer base, but the end result can be a generic platform that only occasionally meets some customer needs.

To serve a niche community with specific needs, SeisWare has instead taken an intentional approach to development, working to build what its customers need from idea to design to implementation.

“Almost everything we build that is customer-facing has been influenced by user feedback all the way through the design process,” says Alana. “Almost everything we’re working on has some sort of user validation with it.”

A focus on user experience (UX) helps ensure that all development has a positive impact on customers, according to the UX design school Center Centre. This shift in perspective helps keep design and product teams working on solving problems and creating possibilities for customers.

Capturing feedback and parsing it for top priority concerns is key to understanding how the software can support user workflows and where the company should focus efforts in the future.

How feedback influences product development

User feedback gets passed on to product teams through many channels, as any communication with a customer could identify a future development idea or need. This can include calls with the sales team or conversations at trade shows.

Customer feedback also includes communication through a company’s support line. While dependable maintenance and support in software should be a given, the SeisWare support team is not just there to help customers with their workflows or the occasional bug. Users can reach out at any time to ask for enhancements, and the product team will review and prioritize them in their planning.

“We record and organize every suggestion from our users in a database,” says Alana. “This way, we can track how often specific enhancements are requested and begin assessing their potential impact on customers.”

At SeisWare, we use a system for analyzing which features and enhancements will be most valuable to customers. This helps measure how often requests are made and how many customers could benefit from a new feature or enhancement. Then, we work to implement the most impactful suggestions.

Building geoscience software for geoscientists

SeisWare is focused on supporting geoscientists and their workflows. Everyone on the team has a geoscience background, giving the company a significant advantage in understanding the needs of the industry.

“SeisWare was originally built to manage a base geophysical workflow. Over time, we’ve developed applications and features that our customers needed to handle their projects,” says Alana.

Most software users are accustomed to a support process that involves filling out a support ticket and hoping that the suggestion or insight isn’t lost in translation.

In contrast, every point of contact with SeisWare allows users to describe their workflows to someone who understands the challenges involved. The potential benefits and nuances of an enhancement suggested by someone using SeisWare’s geological and seismic interpretation software are understood and communicated back to the team.

“We also attend trade shows and industry events to ensure we keep an eye on where the industry is headed so we know where to focus our efforts,” says Alana. “We want to monitor how people work and when those patterns change.”

The power of collaboration in software development

Sometimes user feedback can inspire a valuable update to existing software or a new feature that uniquely addresses customer challenges. In other instances, SeisWare has collaborated directly with customers to build applications to enable functionality that empowers the entire user base with new solutions.

For example, the customizable Field Development Tool is a popular tool in the SeisWare geoscience software platform. It enables geoscience and asset teams to conduct efficient and economical field development.

This tool was built directly with a longtime SeisWare customer who could offer insights and feedback through the design process to build a powerful and intuitive tool that solves a specific and significant industry problem.

“These software products become so specialized because they’re being built specifically with and for these users,” says Alana. “This is very different from enterprise-level software development, where products could be built with little access to the clients.”

Another collaboration helped produce the SeisWare petrophysics calculator, to provide a predefined library of geological and petrophysical calculations for user workflows.

What’s next for SeisWare? The company will continue to develop products that centre the user experience and solve real problems for geoscientists. This approach means balancing strategic direction for building new products and ensuring that existing products continue to meet the needs of existing customers. In this way, development will always focus on what delivers the highest value to users.

It’s certain that future developments will be as intentional as those that have already come to fruition through cooperation, communication, and collaboration with the people who use the software every day.

Is there something you wish SeisWare software could do?   to info@seisware.com to let us know what enhancements you’d like to see in future development.