The state of Enterprise UIs : “It’s a design thinking problem”
James Governor of RedMonk yesterday kicked off an interesting discussion about the state of Enterprise User Interfaces, more specifically Enterprise Portals and points out …
“… That’s right- less painful for users. Products like IBM WebSphere Portal and SAP Netweaver Portal were supposed to bring much improved user interaction models to enterprise IT, but unfortunately traditional systems-focused IT departments, rather than user interaction specialists and their web brethren, did the work …”
James eludes to the crux of the problem in the above quote and Thomas Otter highlights it further in a comment saying …
I sense that most of the problems/challenges with enterprise UI are not just a tool challenge. It is a design thinking problem. Until design thinking permeates enterprise application development, UI will be a sore point.
Thomas is right, it is a design thinking problem, more precisely, the problem is that there are no design thinkers in most teams that build or customize enterprise software…. A quick search for Job posts with keywords “interaction designer SAP” and other related terms on various reputed job boards here, here, here and a few other places revealed almost no relevant results .. clearly we don’t even realize yet that we need to design the interaction a user has with the software we build .. so it should be no surprise that our business software is a pain to use.
It is easy to blame vendors like SAP and IBM in this scenario though … our company portal is a pain to use, SAP must not have done a good job building it .. this is not always the right assumption, software like SAP portal etc. are platforms that allow an extreme amount of customization and often its this team doing the customization that puts together most of what a user will experience .. believe it or not SAP portal is HTML and JavaScript in your browser … yes the same HTML and JavaScript that powers GMail, Google Reader, Apple.com or numerous other engaging experiences on the Internet that you can find listed on various web showcases like this and this.
I bet if the same people who build these experiences on the web were part of the team building and customizing your corporate portal we would not be having this conversation. Yet, I’ve been on this side of similar conversations many times before and this is right about the time where you hear the words …
“… but, I don’t need all this flashy stuff on my business app …”
Unfortunately, many business decision makers very often fail to see beyond the commercial glitz of well designed applications on the Internet and quickly dismiss or underrate the need of an Interaction designer on their team. They miss to see that Interaction design is about thinking and researching how a users interacts with your software, how he feels and how can his feelings be optimized to pleasure, comfort and satisfaction. Its not about rounded corners or gradients or “flashy” animations .. those are just some visual design tools that sometimes (not always) help enhance how a user feels when using software.
Things are changing though, as Anne points out in a comment on James’ post .. the last year or so has seen a lot of new interest in the business value of good user interfaces and James’ post mentions that companies like Deloitte and Accenture realize this value and “have built practices dedicated to using Adobe technology to make existing enterprise applications and their portal front ends less painful for users”. He goes on to quote Jaco Von Eeden from Deloitte …
“Virtually every ERP deal we see we ask where can we use Adobe. We have a reasonable revenue flow and fantastic pipeline.”
This increasing interest in the value of good user interfaces is great for the industry, but I’m not sure if the above approach that Deloitte is embracing is the right way to go .. we should not be force fitting a particular technology into a solution, but instead asking what is the best way to solve a problem and what is the best technology to build that solution.
Adobe’s technologies can be used to build some great solutions but this choice of using a particular technology should not be made by business drivers … instead, it should be based on proper understanding of what is needed. Remember, it is very easy to use these so called Rich Internet Applications technologies to build a Not So Rich Internet Application.
September 8th, 2009
The state of Enterprise UIs : “It’s a design thinking problem” http://bit.ly/hVlvP
September 8th, 2009
The state of Enterprise UIs : “It’s a design thinking problem”: James Governor of RedMonk yesterday kicked off a.. http://bit.ly/VJHJa
September 8th, 2009
The state of Enterprise UIs : Its a design thinking problem: Rags to Riches James Governor of RedMonk yesterday .. http://bit.ly/tdDnz
September 8th, 2009
how things are implemented is key.
SAP’s portal for community is an interesting example. the firm does tend to pour concrete on things like Jive, Confluence, and so on… so you end up running older, less slick versions of things
September 8th, 2009
That’s true.
I was trying to highlight why in general enterprise software has bad user experience .. I think its because of the missing design thinkers … interaction design is usually not part of the process of building enterprise applications .. and unless that changes I think we will continue in this state we’re in.
September 9th, 2009
I have met couple of experienced Usability experts or Interaction Designers or User experience or other things they choose to name the profession of delivering usable and rich interfaces. A lot of them end up creating a UX assuming the technology to be used is going to be HTML or even worse no assumptions at all.
I think many of the Interaction designers do not understand what is possible with RIA technologies.
Even if there are Interaction designers as part of a team , if they have less willingness to explore what is possible , enterprise UI will remain boring.
September 9th, 2009
Many companies like Adobe seem to be releasing new versions just to generate sales based on the fact that it is their latest release. I strongly prefer their older versions than their newer, more difficult to use UI nightmares.
September 9th, 2009
Great read by @mrinal on the State of Enterprise UIs: "It’s a design thinking problem" http://is.gd/34U0Y
September 9th, 2009
RT @kevinSuttle: Great read by @mrinal "It’s a design thinking problem" http://is.gd/34U0Y << thanks Kevin, glad you liked it
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September 9th, 2009
RT: @kevinSuttle: Great read by @mrinal on the State of Enterprise UIs: "It's a design thinking problem" http://is.gd/34U0Y
September 9th, 2009
Mrinal, I have to completely agree that it is lack of an influential design or UX voice within the organisation that is strikes me as the reason that in many cases the UX is getting worse and worse, not better – even though we’re now trying to paint rich interfaces over the top.
The problem, I think, is fundamental – for a business doing a deal on a piece of software, more is more. The more the software can do, the more valuable it is perceived as being.
UX people would see things very differently – it is probably simplistic to say that less is more, but they are much more interested in just having the right things, and no more. All that extra functionality takes a huge toll on the User Experience.
Until it’s actually seen as valuable to strip the excess away and to streamline the UI so that it actually better supports the key tasks that end users want to perform, then the addition of rich interfaces will be little more than lipstick on a pig, at best.
But it’s requires business to actually really be interested in making sure that their employees, the end users, are using software that makes them as efficient, as productive as they can be, rather than just ticking a major deliverable off the list (CRM portal, done.)
In my experience, despite much willingness to pay lipservice at the outset of the project, those organisations are few and far between.
September 9th, 2009
Leisa,
Thanks for sharing you thoughts … you’re absolutely right, its really hard for most business decision makers to perceive the value in stripping features off their product … the reality though is that many a time features exist only to compensate for the ineptness of some other feature in the system.
I think (hope) that the way around this is that businesses will start to understand tangible value in UX (already happening?) and that will hopefully create these influential UX voices and give them a proper place they deserve in application development work flows.
Mrinal
September 9th, 2009
You say
“Its not about rounded corners or gradients or “flashy” animations ”
I fully agree. The flashy stuff comes on top. IMHO often a good interaction design and good *performance* is all users need.
Is GMail, or even google.com “flashy”? not really, but I suppose google has done some interaction design and performance is usually just very good.
The problem is that building a new high performance UI on some existing application can be very difficult or maybe even impossible.
For example if the original UI was build on a server side rendering technology, it might be very hard to build a new UI that is based on a client side rendering technology such as Flex.
September 9th, 2009
That is a very good point Markus,
Moving from server side controlled rendering to a thicker client approach can be pretty challenging implementation wise.
Although, the focus on UX is independent of that technology choice, there are many examples of great experiences built with older UI technologies and at the same time many horrible experience built using newer so call RIA technologies.
I think, its more related to how teams that produce software think … and weather on not there is a driving force in the team that consistently directs the team to good UX choices. Ideally this person should have an authoritative role in the process .. because at times he/she will point you to seemingly disruptive directions .. but that’s what’s needed.
Mrinal
September 11th, 2009
Good article. Most of the enterprise application user experience is terrible. UX voices are unheard and users suffer. (for us it is peoplesoft instead of SAP).
September 11th, 2009
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September 12th, 2009
[...] The state of Enterprise UIs : “It’s a design thinking problem”"Unfortunately, many business decision makers very often fail to see beyond the commercial glitz of well designed applications on the Internet and quickly dismiss or underrate the need of an Interaction designer on their team. They miss to see that Interaction design is about thinking and researching how a users interacts with your software, how he feels and how can his feelings be optimized to pleasure, comfort and satisfaction. Its not about rounded corners or gradients or 'flashy' animations .. those are just some visual design tools that sometimes (not always) help enhance how a user feels when using software." [...]
November 2nd, 2009
[...] The state of Enterprise UIs : “It’s a design thinking problem” [...]
February 20th, 2010
RT @mrinal @jonerp that is a very fundamental flaw in way enterprises build software ..like I mentioned here http://bit.ly/4A6xw >agreed