Components of the product
Creating a software product involves carefully considering various components that work together harmoniously. These components are the building blocks of the software and it is important to get them right to create a successful product. Ensuring smooth functionality, usability, and maintainability of the product while ensuring that it caters to all segments of the users and also at a reasonable cost, is crucial for a product's success.
User Experience:
UX focuses on the overall experience users have while interacting with the software. It's about making the software easy to use, efficient, and enjoyable.
Usability, on the other hand, is ensuring that a product is easy to learn and use with the smallest learning curve.
The right UX for a product plays a crucial role in making it successful. Would we use Instagram if it were not easy to use? Umm, I guess not!
User Interface:
The User Interface is the front-end part of the software that users interact with directly. It includes all the visual elements, such as buttons, menus, icons, and other graphical components.
Imagine using a coffee machine with touch buttons for different types of coffee. The buttons are clearly labeled, and easy to see, and you can navigate the options effortlessly.
Javascript is key in building the UI, the frontend part of the software. ( Not to mention all the other magic that Javascript can do. )
Let's delve into some key aspects of UI below:
- Design and Layout: This involves the aesthetic aspects of the software, including color schemes, typography, and the overall visual appeal.
- Navigation: Ensures users can move through the software intuitively, finding the functionalities they need without confusion. If the "Like" button on Facebook were hidden in settings, I bet no one would have liked our pictures as much, no? It is important to be able to navigate easily on all devices with ease.
- Responsiveness: Adapts to different screen sizes and devices, providing a consistent user experience across desktops, tablets, and smartphones. Netflix looks different in a mobile phone, a tablet, a laptop, and a TV, but still serves the purpose!
A quick peak into UI vs UX before we get to the other components:
A ketchup bottle can be sleek and beautiful looking but the purpose is to be able to serve as soon as possible, right? An idle bottle deposits ketchup at the bottom of the container, in image 1 ( left ), the user has to flip it upside down and "wait" for the ketchup to flow down. Points for user experience - not so much!
In image 2 ( right ), while the ketchup bottle still looks good, the ketchup is ready to be served the moment the lid is opened.
Which one would you prefer to have? I sure don't like my Pizzas cold! So the second is the one I surely prefer, this is what we refer to as a better User Experience. User Exper ience is not limited to just software products but to every aspect of life.

Let's move to the other components:
Service / Backend:
The backend is the server-side part of the software, handling business logic, database interactions, and server management.
Think of an online food delivery service. When you order food, the backend processes your order, checks inventory, communicates with the restaurant, and schedules the delivery.
- Server Management: Involves setting up and maintaining servers to host the software, ensuring it runs smoothly and efficiently. Imagine a restaurant where all the things in the kitchen work well together, from the cooking area, gas stoves, vessels, tables, knives, etc.
- Database Management: Manages the storage, retrieval, and updating of data within the software. Common databases include SQL (e.g., MySQL, PostgreSQL) and NoSQL (e.g., MongoDB) databases. Imagine a pantry and a fridge in the cooking area, let's say some cakes are being made, newly prepared cakes go into the fridge and as per request, the ones already there can be given back or even the count of the total cakes can be provided, right? Similarly, a database has records, for now, imagine it to be a table of items on an Excel sheet, we can add items to it, remove it, or modify it too.
- APIs (Application Programming Interfaces): Facilitate communication between different software components, enabling integration with third-party services and other software. The API is like the waitstaff in a restaurant. The menu lists the available dishes (services/functions) that the restaurant (software) can provide, and the waitstaff takes the orders from the customers (users) and communicates them to the kitchen (backend). Similarly, the API allows users or other systems to request specific services from the software.
Security:
Security is a critical component, in protecting the software and its users from malicious attacks and data breaches.
Security in software is similar to the security measures and health inspections in a restaurant. It involves protecting the restaurant (here software) from rodents (hackers), ensuring that food (data) is handled safely, and maintaining hygiene standards (data integrity and privacy). This ensures that the customers' experience is safe and that the restaurant operates within regulations.
- Authentication and Authorization: Ensures only authorized users can access certain parts of the software, typically through login systems and user roles. You don't want the whole world reading your emails, do you?
- In a restaurant you can imagine this to be like the access to the reservation area, you get to go there only if you have a prior booking.
- Or in the bank, the access to the locker area, is restricted to the locker owner, provided they provide the key and the account passbook right? Similarly, certain data is put behind an auth-wall, to ensure leakage of confidential data.
- Data Encryption: Protects sensitive data by converting it into a secure format that can only be read by authorized parties.
- Imagine you and your friend are in a foreign country, you are traveling on public transport, and you want to say something to your friend, something personal, but you cannot say it since there are people on all sides, what do you do? You speak in a language that your friend knows but they don't, like say, Hindi or Kannada or some other language that only you and your friend know right? That way, what you said to your friend is "encrypted"!
- Regular Audits and Updates: Involves regularly reviewing and updating the software to fix vulnerabilities and improve security measures.
- Regular audits and updates in software are like health inspections and kitchen upgrades in a restaurant. Health inspectors (security auditors) regularly check the restaurant to ensure it meets safety standards and fix any issues they find (vulnerabilities). Additionally, the restaurant may update its kitchen equipment and practices (software updates) to improve efficiency and security.
Performance Optimization:
Would you use Instagram if the post loaded 10 minutes after you open the app, where you would need to keep looking at the loading spinner? Hmmm, I would guess "no", right? One thing people have a shortage of in this busy world is time! We want everything, especially the software products to be fast.
Let's try to understand performance with a real-life example.
In a normal restaurant, you would see that the shopkeeper keeps certain food items ready in the morning even before the customers order it, such as "Idly-vada", right? They do it because the hotel manager knows that this is one of the most sold items and the customers will buy it, increasing the speed of delivery, compared to if the Idly and Vada were to be made after the customer ordered it, correct? This is similar to how the software products "cache" the data to serve faster - hence improving performance.

A few ways how we can improve performance are below
- Load Balancing: Distributes incoming network traffic across multiple servers to ensure no single server becomes overwhelmed.
- Imagine there are 4 chefs in a restaurant, when the orders flow in, imagine there is a manager who checks the bandwidth of the chefs and assigns the next task to them to ensure that not all the work goes to a particular chef and overloads them, here the manager works as a load balancer. But imagine, if there are 30 biriyanis ordered, each chef is capable of making 10 an hour, for some reason 1 Chef needs to walk out, and now the load is split among the three, the chefs are still able to deliver, but they are at their maximum capacity, if for any reason, another chef also needs to step out, now the 2 chefs are not able to deliver 30 requests an hour since their bandwidth is a maximum of 10 an hour, similarly when the load is not balanced and a server is overloaded, it fails too.
- Caching: Stores frequently accessed data temporarily to reduce retrieval times and server load.
- Code Optimization: Involves writing efficient code, minimizing resource usage, and reducing execution times.
Front-end Performance optimization techniques:
- Minimize HTTP Requests
- Optimize images
- Leverage browser caching.
- Using CDN ( only applicable in certain scenarios )
- Improve code performance
- Code splitting
- Optimized bundles
We will be looking at all these points in detail in future sections, for now just know that these exist!
Testing:
Testing ensures the software functions correctly and meets the required standards before release.
- Unit Testing: Tests individual components or units of the software to ensure they work correctly.
- Imagine you are in a car factory, every part of the car needs to be tested before it is put together, right? Imagine unit testing ( UT ) as testing a particular component, like say the instrument console or the alloy wheels, etc.
- e2e ( end-to-end ) testing (front-end): E2E testing is a comprehensive testing approach that validates the functionality and performance of an entire application, from start to finish, as it simulates real user scenarios. Frameworks: Playwright, Cypress.
- This is similar to testing the functionality of a particular feature end-to-end, say the engine, checking if the engine can switch gears, reach its max potential, etc. Or, checking if all 4 wheels work fine and brakes apply, etc. i.e. testing the complete workflow of a feature end-to-end which leads to ensuring that the whole application works well too, but for that, we have the below - Integration testing.
- Integration Testing: Tests how different components of the software work together.
- Putting in the pieces together and taking the car for a drive to test if it works fine.
- User Acceptance Testing (UAT): Involves real users testing the software to ensure it meets their needs and expectations.
- Asking a real user to drive the car and asking their feedback.
Understanding the components of a software product is crucial for developing robust, efficient, and user-friendly applications. Each component, from the user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) to backend infrastructure, security, performance optimization, testing, deployment, maintenance, and support mechanisms, plays a vital role in the overall success of the software.
With this understanding, let's proceed!