Production Quality

The reception of a user interface has strong command over how a product's overall quality is perceived.

Even when crafting the simplest isolated application, administering full and complete diligence regarding interface design principles is the most important thing you can do. To all users, the interface is your application, and by association is you. Sparing effort with interface design is a fast track for your work to be regarded as cheap shovelware.

I can say whatever I want here, but I am not the only one with strong convictions regarding quality user experience:

Quality does extend beyond just having an efficient user interface. Complete consistency is of prime importance. All forms should follow the same rules and behaviors. Asynchronously loaded components need be brought into the display space in an elegant manner - there are no quick flashes of content or ever-expanding views. Labels should select the controls they represent. Tooltips, when required, need to be useful and convey focal meaning. Tab ordering should be consistent and logical.

More subjectively: you never stack modal windows or embed a tab control within a tab control, especially with multiple scroll zones. Animated gifs are not load indicators; they are 8-bit color raster images without transparency. Performance is never negotiable.

Sonic Boom. Sonic Boom is regarded by many as a huge piece of shit. With an outstanding Metacritic score, it simply just sucked. Why was it so bad? An amalgamation of substandard cutscences definitely did not help. When the opening scene violently shits the bed, the rest of the game, no matter how great, cannot reliably recover.

In my own very contrived way I'm trying to heavily punch in that professional respect for your own work is mandatory. You need the capacity and conviction to develop it, or you will just be shoveling garbage the rest of your life, publishing Sonic Boom after Sonic Boom.