https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/28/commandbar-lands-19m-to-inject-in-app-searches-with-smarts/

Thanks to the explosion of low- and no-code development tools, building web apps from scratch has become easier — and cheaper — than it once was. But sophisticated search and navigation functions can complicate the process. A recent survey from IT research firm GoodFirms estimates the cost of a complex app to be between $91,550 and $211,000. That’s before any debugging, marketing and publishing expenses.

James Evans, Richard Freling and Vinay Ayyala encountered the problem themselves while prototyping a web-based grading tool — CodePost — for computer science assignments. They ran into a classic user interface challenge: new users couldn’t figure out how to use the tool, while existing users found it slow and difficult to navigate.