Love this!

Thanks for all the feedback! I've added a section at the end addressing as many as I can.

I like buttons too. Quite a fair bit. But when you get to too many buttons, they become icons.

Add that to the fact that all user tests we've done have fared better with search and more verbose interfaces, and I wonder if we are both of us far from the target user profile.

Good catch - fixed!

That's a good point at the end, and where we'd like to be. Unfortunately dev time is always a finite resource, especially for an early-stage product. You need to pick one over the other - at least a little.

> Unfortunately dev time is always a finite resource

true, but usually not the limiting factor.

more to the point; money is a finite resource if the product is intended to generate a profit.

Some of our inspiration definitely comes from CAD, NX CAD and Fusion. IMO the work they've put into making a mountain of functionality useful and intuitive to a new user has paid off.

And that's the functionality in front and planned to be favored by users. Many older features are available to those who know how to ask for them.

Also, in terms of the geometry, how the system builds models, the feature version is stored with the features, and that version will build models in newer software, until migrated forward by a user.

It's very complex.

Thanks for this! We're definitely working it into our system. It's always good to have multiple paths when possible, so a menu that connects to search and backwards might be quite useful to introduce users to features, but tie in muscle memory once they are used to it.

We're guilty of this, despite caring about the product and the users. It's hard to focus on maintenance and deep iteration when there's more critical (and cool) functionality to chase. Not to mention that iterative UX improvements have the same problem as negative results in academia - it's hard to get people excited about it.

I've used the UK verify service, and it was pretty horrible then. Only country I've seen do it somewhat well is Singapore, with Singpass.

Simple solution: Write, but don't publish. Most of the blocks of feeling like you have nothing to add get better if you write more.

Write for your colleagues, your partner, or just yourself, so you can clarify the streams of thought in your head and bang them against something.

Even if you never publish, you'll benefit. Chances are, you'll find a few you want to publish along the way.