SaaS Terminology — from API to UI

Australians are known for their slang, shortening everything from afternoon to service station, but we go one step further when we operate in the tech space. Tech companies love to shorten words and phrases just like Aussies do. The tech world is filled with countless jargon, buzz words and flashy colours — we’re not sure if that’s just to confuse the user, or because it looks cool (probably a bit of both).

We’re guilty of this too! We pride ourselves on treating everyone like a human being, putting a human face to the code, so it goes above the binary ones and zeroes, but we sometimes get a bit carried away. As tech infiltrates everything around us more and more each day, and is continued to be exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, we think it’s a good time to push pause and take a moment to think about why we say what we do, and the core reason behind it.

As a tech company, we want to lead with the idea that we aim to make things better for our customers, to operate with strong leadership that leads to long term client relationships and positive word of mouth. All too commonly, we tech companies think about how we can make things better for for our lives and our own workflows — but it’s not about us, it’s about you! A big part of this is our language, how we communicate internally vs. how we communicate externally.

We want to recognise there’s a fine line between dumbing down our work and interactions with our customers (which no one enjoys) and educating and empowering our customers so you can make better decisions and contribute to a conversation that affects you.

Knowledge is power, so here’s our favourite buzzwords and industry terms that we commonly say within our office:

SaaS — Software as a Service

Pronounced just like ‘sass’ but it’s not a typo when you’re calling someone cheeky — it’s software that you buy and use online. Things like Canva, DropBox and Google Drive are excellent examples of this. SaaS is our new normal for software delivery, gone are the days of buying a CD (or floppy disc) with a particular software on it and loading it onto your computer — only to repeat the same thing again in 12 months time. Instead, you get billed every month, and most SaaS products are available on lots of devices, not just your desktop computer.

UI and UX — User Interface and User Experience

Like lots of tech acronyms, they’re not always overly grammatically correct. These two terms are completely separate things, but they do sit under the same umbrella. They’re super important to front end design, and back end development (more on those below), and they’re completely customer focused. A good UI/UX designer is able to think from their customer’s perspective, to visit a site in their shoes and think about how the experience and interface (fancy word for what you see on the screen) would be like for a customer to use. It’s quite a people-focused discipline — which you wouldn’t usually associate with tech.

API — Application Programming Interface

APIs are a developer’s best friends, they’re a key into someone else’s house, so you can have a sticky beak and enter whenever you want for a cup of sugar or a roll of toilet paper. We use APIs all the time with our work, with companies such as Google, Atlassian and PayPal. You would have come across this anytime you’ve seen a ‘Pay with PayPal’ button, or if you’ve been able to see a company’s Google Map location directly on their website.

Backend and Frontend Development

Backend development is anything that is located ‘behind the scenes’ and isn’t able to be seen or used by the user. It’s very similar to internet cables that run underground, we can’t see that they’re there, but if they weren’t, the entire public facing infrastructure would collapse.

Frontend development is anything that the customer can see — and relates to the UI and UX mentioned above. It’s all the nice, clean lines and pretty pictures that cover a website or app, and make it easy for the user to find their way around. This part is much like a physical house — you can see it, touch it and feel it.

Agile is the most popular methodology (way of working) in the software industry, and is the way we work in our office. It’s quite a complex framework and there are heaps of books and talks about this way of working if you’re interested in learning more. Essentially, it’s all about breaking your work down into smaller ‘sprints’ so work is done incrementally over a period of time. This means that we can have the product shipped out to you to use in a really short period of time, and we can work on it together, making sure it suits your needs and we’ve done the right research to ensure it suits your clients and staff.

2FA — Two-factor Authentication

2FA is an acronym for one of our favourite security measures, two-factor authentication. This is when you’ve got to enter a code that’s been texted through to you — or maybe you get it via an app — to log into a program. We love this feature as it is so beneficial for your online security and is so easy to implement. It can get annoying having to constantly input the code, but trust us, it is worth it for protecting your identity and online assets.

So where to from here? We’ve put together a list of things that we say everyday — and that’s just today! We don’t know where the future is going or where the technology will take us and how our language will evolve. We believe that we will continue on the SaaS model, and the UI and UX will become ever more important, as there’s more competition in the marketplace and tech companies have got to stand out from the crowd to be noticed — finding their tribe. Check back with us to see how we change this list over the next 6, 12, and 36 months!

Originally published at https://www.hutsix.com.au on December 4, 2020.