Comments on: Is Walk up and Use a Myth?

By: Jake

Jake — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 00:15:18 +0000

Well, as I've said before, I don't think users want innovation, especially enterprise users; products like Mint and Intuit are consumer products that have low barriers to exit, making it easier to try new products. Enterprises don't have that luxury.

By: Jake

Jake — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 00:10:19 +0000

If you limit UI design to visual elements, then yes, it's not a huge concern, but I consider usability part of UI design. So, good usability (i.e. as close to walk-up-and-use as possible) should be an evaluation criterion, since training costs are part of the purchase price.

By: Jake

Jake — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 16:15:18 +0000

By: Jake

Jake — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 16:10:19 +0000

By: John E. Bredehoft (Empoprises)

John E. Bredehoft (Empoprises) — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 01:42:03 +0000

Another possibility is to threaten your own core business – i.e. set up the new app yourself and somehow entice your customers to transition from the legacy app to the new app. There's obviously a danger in this, since if a legacy app user is looking at your app, they're obviously more open to looking at competitor apps.

Unfortunately I don't really know anything about Oracle's vertical apps, so I have no idea how their planned transition from the acquired apps to the new fusion line will work out. It will be interesting to see what happens.

By: John E. Bredehoft (Empoprises)

John E. Bredehoft (Empoprises) — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 01:37:51 +0000

Sorry for the late reply, but I just saw your comment this evening. Good point re making a distinction between at-will apps vs. must-use apps. People may grumble about poor design in a must-use app, but they'd grumble more if they were unemployed. And when a purchaser (e.g. a government agency) has to choose between several must-use apps, UI design is not at the top of the purchaser's evaluation criteria.

By: Jake

Jake — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:16:55 +0000

Amen. I like the phrase "interesting undertaking", if only b/c I know it's a massive understatement. I'll bet the vast majority of homegrown enterprise apps (those built for use by a company inside its own firewall, not those sold to companies by big software companies) have no design considerations *at all*.

Face it, when IT (or any internal group) builds an app for use within the firewall, time/resources are always a problem, and no one views design as a must-have.

I don't think Burke misses that point, rather his observation is just a witty way to point out the disparity.

By: Joonas Linkola

Joonas Linkola — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:22:12 +0000

We are currently developing an enterprise app that is essentially a port of a legacy client-server app used internally but adding a customer-facing portal to it, too. On one hand trying to keep things as familiar as possible to internal users but on the other as intuitive as possible to customers has proved to be quite an interesting undertaking. Add to that the usual time and cost constraints and you end up taking a rather pragmatic approach to development.

Many enterprise app projects are also rushed through without anyone truly skilled in UI design, so it's no wonder if the time sheet and expense report apps end up like the one in the cartoon.

By: Jake

Jake — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:22:05 +0000

There are problems when you have longtime users who pay for your software, as I mentioned in my reply to John. Redesign means retraining, which is an additional cost that can put-off your customers. Add backward compatibility, and you're on a treadmill providing incremental enhancements.

Startups have the ability to start from scratch, which allows them design freedom. Since Mint was recently acquired by Intuit, maybe the answer here is to acquire startups that are doing it right, aka threatening your core business

By: Jake

Jake — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:17:32 +0000

I agree that forms filled with fields aren't difficult to use, but to the eyes of an average user, forms are busy and require thought whereas consumer apps are much less cluttered.

I've always preferred a single form over a wizard, if only because I can see all my input on a single page.

Separate fields for an address is a usage problem, i.e. people are accustomed to it so designers flow that way by default. Learned behavior is tough to overcome, and that one comes from the days of paper forms. Good luck.

By: Jake

Jake — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:12:10 +0000

I suppose I should have pointed out that "walk up and use" is more a goal for the designers of at-will apps vs. must-use apps. At-will apps must be easy because they aren't required; must-use apps don't have to design for engagement as purposefully.

Excellent point about expectations, which weighs in much more heavily when your users pay for your software and want to pay (in money, time, lost productivity, etc.) as little as possible for retraining.

Skinning is great, but usually, it's limited to CSS elements. If skins actually modified the interface, they'd be much more useful. This is the beauty of open APIs; they allow for redesigning of apps without impacting the core data and services.

By: Kiran

Kiran — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 02:50:05 +0000

The way I see it is the next evolutionary stage for Enterprise Apps is Walk Up and Use. I don't mean just the interface but both IT perspective (cloud apps) and design perspective (simple apps). If the big corps (including Oracle) are late to this, startups will take advantage and do this. Like mint.com did to Quicken (i know its consumer product again) but lately I have been seeing lot of BI startups, like Indicee, which are doing exactly that.

By: Gary

Gary — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:33:52 +0000

A “C:>” DOS prompt has the simplicity of a google search box. A simple command like “FORMAT A:” would result in a complex operation.
Just because an interface has lot of 'boxes' doesn't make it hard to use.
It may be scary or off-putting which is when those multi-screen wizards became all the rage, but all they did was scatter the boxes across different screens.
A data entry screen will, by necessity, have a lot of fields. A dashboard interface will probably have half a dozen indicators.
That said, the UI of many applications could be improved simply by separating out the common and uncommon operations. And it would be nice if apps would start to take a single address field and parse it out themselves rather than require us to separately enter city/state/postcode/country….

By: sql

sql — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:54:54 +0000

nice job

By: John E. Bredehoft (Empoprises)

John E. Bredehoft (Empoprises) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:37:52 +0000

"Walk up and use" is certainly a goal, but it is admittedly hard to realize, in part because of the different experiences of users. I'm sure that you encounter this in your development work. In my company's particular case, our application is used by people with different goals, ranging from qualified latent print examiners who focus on fingerprints all the time, to embassy personnel and cops for which the fingerprint work is just a small part of their duties.

In addition, since we've been providing this application for decades, a certain set of expectations has developed. While someone in a vacuum might design the application one way, once you step out of the vacuum you realize that our users (most of whom are repeat customers) like the application just fine the way it was in the previous release, and in the release before that. As a result, the application has legacy screens that do things a certain way because that's how we've always done it.

With such variables, it's difficult to design a "walk up and use" application that will satisfy everyone. Perhaps the "skins" concept may be appropriate here. Our application really doesn't use it, and I haven't seen it in the public-facing Oracle online applications, but maybe we simply need to acknowledge that one size does not fit all, and that different users have different interface needs. The problem with a "skins" approach is that it adds to the complexity of the application.