Firstly, I do not resemble the caricature put next to this article. It is seriously scary. Let that not deter you from reading further.
Voila! Well this was only supposed to be the code name of the project. But, I think we had been using the name so long that it stuck and why not? When you use this application you are supposed to be surprised by what you can do with it (mind you I am not marketing, that blog article has come before this). Let me begin our story.
The development usually starts when the requirement team is ready with the features. We do a feasibility analysis (i.e., features that we can support in a given time). Well the analysis ranges from - “Well, this is not exactly a walk in the park!” to “Are you crazy?. Go fly a kite!!”. The idea of the requirement team is to imagine and ours is to bring it to reality. The end result is that imagination meets reality. More of imagination, less of reality when we finish the meeting. But hey! who said product development is easy.
Ah! I now have to mention about the testing team. They are the ones who ensure that we do things right and good. They help us make the product better (a very nice way of telling they point out our mistakes). No, seriously they are the reasons why Voila does exactly what it is supposed to do and they are the reason why we develop better.
Now we get down to the job of getting things done. We start with the design. This is the script for our implementation. We batter the details of the features behind closed doors, bug the requirement team on the finer details of the features, use a lot of ink and board, discuss, argue, fight till we reach a conclusion (or people outside ask us to shut up) on how we are going to implement each of the feature.
By this time, each member of the team knows what he/she needs to do (mostly). And then we take the giant leap. We start banging our keyboards, scratching our heads and having distant looks on our faces. Oh! I mean we start coding. This is the fun part. We bring the features to reality.
We were so excited when we started. We wanted to see something real very soon. So we furiously typed a lot of code for 3 days, gathered the team in conference room, put the code on the projector and started putting everyones code together. By the end of the day (and into early next morning) things started working. All we were trying to do was draw one rectangle (along with a lot of other things the user would never see). And somewhere at 2AM ,we got it working. I have never been so happy to draw a rectangle before! By the time we finished we got the rectangle to rotate and move too.
So we had a good start. The UI development, annotations, effects, saving, importing/exporting, capture all of this were going in parallel. We did things that were first for our kind of applications. The various capture options, effects, the 3D callouts were all fun to see (I am sure you will enjoy it). The spray effects (especially the Heart) is quite popular. With Valentines day to come, I bet it will be put to great use. The range of annotations supported from simple rectangle to multi-control point lines to text was challenging. We know you will put it to great use. The UI had to be great. Our CEO is very particular about it. The developers/testing team took a lot of pain to ensure this (had to). We hope you like it too. The testing team really had to work at break neck speed. With the amount of features churning out per day, they had to be on their toes always. Bet they had to run a marathon sprinting all the way. And guess what, they used to point out bugs in Voila using Voila itself (remember capture and arrow). They had to type less on the bug description. Just snap a pic, point an arrow and Voila! they are done. How ironic!
And so it went on. Plans changed along the way, requirements surely did. Murphys law as always held good. So we had to burn some (gross understatement of quantity) midnight oil and so on. But at the same time, things started falling in place, we could see the order in chaos. People started creating amazing things using the product. The developers were the ones most surprised . They have mostly a technical outlook towards their work and to see such creative things come out from the product they coded was something great. We were really surprised when our graphic designers created the About Box, Trial Window of Voila using Voila! One went as far to say that for simple creative work Voila might give Photoshop a run for its money (I have recommended a hike for him). We then started supporting updates, trial and registration. We suddenly realized we are reaching somewhere near the end of the first phase of Voila.
And all the above activities took a mere 5 months. Now that’s Voila!
We loved developing the product because we thought it will make a difference in the area it is intended for. We think you would like it too. We had fun developing it, I hope you feel the same when you use it. I am sure we have still further to go. Our journey in some way has just began. For this we hope you will provide your valuable insights. Each time we see our users feedback we learn things that make our product better.
I hope you have enjoyed this article. Have fun.
Happy New Year!
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We cannot express in words how thrilled we are! This has been a big Christmas gift to us.
Yes, you heard me! We have a lot of exciting offers in store for you on this holiday season! 
