Wednesday February 01, 2006

No More “Ready-Fire-Aim” User Experiences

I'm sure there must be a big rule written somewhere, that I can't seem to locate, that states that all enterprise software must have a less-than-optimal user experience, especially the interface.

There are, of course, examples of where this is not true. Although my point may be a bit exaggerated, too many agree with my view, especially customers, whom I care about most.

In the consumer world, there is more of a tendency to find out just how a consumer will use a product, then focus engineering efforts to build and improve on that process. In the enterprise development world, we tend to build a service or application that serves a need, or more often, meets a spec. (I say we and I readily include Sun in this, though it's a widespread issue in the enterprise software industry.) Only after we build the foundation and frame the house do we ask the "interface" folks to slap on a GUI and maybe (maybe) look at how to improve the usability.

I can't tell you how many times I see prototype product demos from my team who warn me, "Don't look at the interface or usability, we'll fix that later. But isn't this incredible functionality?" Ooops. Too late; we've missed it. I am now asking that every product I see must be accompanied by a story board that shows me the user experience "flow" by audience type. In our case that means a developer, an admin or an end user.

And for you CLI fans, there are even those who have made that a better experience, as well. Our friends at Apple have shown us that even a CLI experience can be improved.

Usability is not just an interface. It's the total cycle, from awareness to obtaining to evaluating to developing to deploying to production and maintenance. The interface, although very important, is only one aspect of this chain. And of course, the best user interface is no user interface at all. Self configuration, self diagnosis, automatic assembly are all better than interfaces that require human interaction. But short of no interface, there is no reason why we can't improve user experience for the folks who use our products and services.

Features and functions don't have to be ugly.