Application attitude
I think that an application has done its job when it delights you. Sometimes it's very very simple and that scores brownie points, IMHO.
Check out the message I received from Plaxo (I changed some info for anonymity):
This cracks me up.
While designing applications, we attempt to pull apart the ingredients in the secret sauce of good apps. Is it the code? The platform? The screen flow? The copywriting? The graphics?
I think it's all of the above and the magic happens when the balance of those things are contextually relevant. The Plaxo message works because its wit speaks to the type of folks who use this app. We're likely techy or in the techy friendlly and we are extremely sarcastic. But this message wouldn't work in MS Office. MS Outlook is the application who should be seen and not heard, you use it all day long and it just needs to work, not trade smarmy remarks with you.
I have been observing user interviews during a project that we're partnering on. The interviewer is amazingly skilled, he's able to get out of his own way--he doesn't project his own thoughts or ideas into the interview. He's listening and calmly tailoring the pre-set questions based on the interviewee's responses. This is a skill I admire, I personally get performance anxiety and overcompensate by giving them the answer I want to hear.
Anywho, by interviewing five or so different type of users now, we've exposed such a wide array of needs that hadn't even crossed my mind before. Now we're able to understand what will be contextually relevant to these users. For example, we found that the support manager truly needs to be one step ahead of bugs, he needs a platform like blogs to communicate upcoming fixes proactively--before users run across them and get frustrated. And since this site is self/service & support type, the users of the site need to feel like they have a relationship with the site owners. So the application attitude should be "we're here to help, here's how to dialogue with us".
So many applications are built without fully understanding who will be using them. When you know who the users are and have discerned their needs, then you have metrics to measure a successful design. Simple, but not easy!