Importance of UI Design to Business Software


Anyone can look at consumer electronics and end user software and see that design is incredibly important to the success of products in that space. Apple's iPod and iPhone are great examples. Stellar visual, interaction, and industrial design has transformed the mp3 player market and is in the process of doing so for the cell phone market as well. End user software is also going through a transformation with visual and interaction design at the top of the features list. Both Apple and Microsoft are trying to outdo each other in the visual rendering of their latest operating system offerings (see my previous blog entry on this). In my view, delight results from a product that has been designed to address cognitive, behavioral, and affective characteristics. Traditional user experience design tried to eliminate user error (behavior) and tried to address the user's mental model by predicting what they would expect should happen. However, traditional user experience design didn't focus on the visual design of a system which directly effects a user's emotional reaction or affect. Getting all three of these attributes right, in my view, is when delight happens and when you see successes like I summarized above.

All of this is equally applicable to enterprise software, in my view, but the demand for great design hasn't been as strong in that market. Dennis Howlett has blogged on this topic and summarized some really insightful perspectives on this. He makes the point that users aren't the decision-makers in this market and, as a result, their preference for great design doesn't have as much impact. However, users in that market still demand great design. The incorporation of Web 2.0 user feedback mechanisms (rating and commenting) into enterprise software may well serve to make enterprise users' views on design more visible.

Social Networking Design - Privacy Settings

Do you know what your privacy setting are in Facebook, Myspace, or Twitter? Most people just take the default settings which are not very private. But you say, of course their not private, it is a "social networking" site after all. Social networking in Web 2.0 doesn't mean showing your embarrassing pics from last night's party or in the bath pics of your 5-year old to absolutely everyone!

Most people who have spent a bit of time looking into the privacy settings on Facebook (my favorite), for example, have learned to restrict certain parts of their profile to only their friends and also changed the default access to at least their network (which by itself can be a couple of million users!). A recent article from heise online provides some additional information on this topic. It is an interesting challenge to find the right default design point regarding privacy when the essence of the site is social sharing. Web 2.0 introduces lots of interesting challenges like this to designers.


Raising the Bar on OS UIs

I've just been looking at the demo of the Leopard release of Apple's OSX and I'm struck by how many of the enhancements could be considered Apple catching up with enhancements that Microsoft put into its Vista UI. While there are really cool unique UI features being introduced by Apple, I'm struck, and somewhat surprised, to see so many similarities to recent Windows enhancements. This is probably healthy though in that it raises the level of visual and interaction design in software products that are pervasive across all industries. I think that bodes well for the importance of visual and interaction design in general. Its always nice to see customers voting with their pocketbooks reinforcing the importance of great design.

Have a go yourself with the Apple - Mac OS X Leopard - Guided Tour. Now, if I could only have a right mouse button and a backspace key on my MacBook!

Facebook teams with RIM

It often takes vendors of amazingly successful products to get together to push into a new paradigm. That may well just be happening with the partnership between RIM and Facebook. Social computing just entered into a new phase on mobile devices with RIM's Facebook implementation. While this is a significant development, I'm a little worried that it may also be creating a bunch of monsters. I already see many people around me wedded to their Blackberries while mobile and then being wedded to their computers using Facebook when not mobile. Now, what will they do. We may never be able to talk to them again! Of course, Facebook accessibility has already been available on mobile devices but in a much more limited way (its available on my mobile phone but only for viewing and updating my status).

Facebook teams with RIM for Web 2.0 on-the-go | The Register

Mashup Privacy Concerns

Mashups increasingly make data which were heretofore not made available easy to deliver to users or it is the process of putting together disparate data sources which is now possible. An article in Computerworld makes the case for privacy concerns from mashups much like the Kobe Bryant incident involving text messaging data. Access the article for more information on this.

Microsoft: Watch out for Web 2.0's 'Kobe Bryant' moment

Visually Stunning Charts and Graphs

In my experience, visualization of data is the most promising application of computer technology and yet it is often the most disappointing. I've usually seen either really horrible graphic treatment or beautiful graphics which don't have anything to do with understanding the data. This article presents an overview of tools, applications and techniques for visualizing data in charts and graphs which look really promising. Among other things both free and commercial chart tools, services, desktop-applications and web-based solutions (Flash, JavaScript, CSS) — you can use them on your server are presented.

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An Interesting New Approach to Tag Browsing

The tag cloud appears to be the ubiquitous web 2.0 user interface control. When I first saw the cloud, I thought it was ugly. I did get used to it due largely to exposure. Despite its ugliness, the cloud packs a lot of useful information into a relatively small space and its fairly usable. However, I still think we need alternative design ideas for the function of the cloud. Here's one I came across which here is used to browse Flickr. You just type a tag word in, and you will get a 6x6 grid of thumbnails. When you move the mouse, you see a circle of related tags. Speed isn't its greatest feature but the idea is interesting especially the thumbnails in the center and the ability to drill down into them further within the control. The one addition I'd make is to make the circle of related tags illustrate relative relatedness by distance from the center. But still, some interesting user interface design work.

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Simplicity vs. Complexity

John Maeda of MIT has gone through an interesting transformation career-wise going from computer science to art. That transformation has now led him to interesting insights into simplicity and complexity. Here's a recent talk of his on this topic. What I found most interesting is the insight that there is a lot complexity and simplicity in the world and humans like both, but in the right context. It is figuring out which context you're designing for that is the trick to great design.

TED | Talks | John Maeda: Simplicity patterns (video)

Amazing 3D Street Designs

Do you normally think of graffiti as subversive art spray-painted illegally on the walls of a city? A number of arttists, including Edgar Mueller, Julian Beever and Kurt Wenner, defy that stereotype, painting and chalking openly on city streets and sidewalks. Check out these brief bios with 20 amazing images of their work from around the world! This stuff is truly amazing. I'd love to see it in real life.

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RIA Competitive Landscape - Silverlight

Rich Internet Application user interfaces are the new competitive areas of focus on the competitive landscape and Microsoft's new "Silverlight" looks like a formidable player. It lets Web developers and designers create "rich, engaging user experiences with 2-D graphics, animation, images, media, and video," to use Microsoft's own description. Silverlight competes in this arena with Adobe Flash and Flex, with OpenLaszlo and Curl, and with a variety of AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) frameworks.

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Blasting the Myth of the Fold

Designing for the browser always brings up a discussion of designing above the fold. Well, this article sites some interesting research that questions the fixation many designers have on the fold. The author points out, "there is an astonishing amount of disbelief that the users of web pages have learned to scroll and that they do so regularly. Holding on to this disbelief – this myth that users won’t scroll to see anything below the fold – is doing everyone a great disservice, most of all our users". Select the article below to read more...

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UI Designers Learning from Animation Artists

Apple UI designers have learned how to grab the user's attention using a classic physical animation technique called squash and stretch. Think of a cartoon nose squishing exaggeratedly as it bumps into a wall, then going pop! as it pulls away—that’s squash and stretch. Animators have been using it for decades to give their drawn figures depth and weight As the newest Web 2.0 RIAs are getting more into what might be called cinematic, UI designers could do well to look to animation experts like apparently Apple has done. See the article below for more information.



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Active Involvement in Web 2.0 Still Low

New results show that a small percentage of users of so-called social computing or Web 2.0 sites get actively involved in directly contributing to the site. An article on vnunet.com summarizes the results. A key point that is made is that most of these sites, like YouTube, Flickr, and Wikipedia have huge numbers of people actually viewing them so if a relatively small percentage of them contribute, that still accounts for some significant contribution numbers. However, it is important for those building Web 2.0 capabilities into the projects and products to keep these percentages in mind when tracking both passive and active interactions.

Fashion and Technology Meet

I've been seeing a trend toward technology companies focusing more on great design - in fact fashionable design. Geeks of Doom has an article that points out that electronics giant Philips and crystal company Swarovski are collaborating on a line of fashionable tech accessories called Active Crystals. So far, the Active Crystals line has unveiled four sets of headphones of polished silver metal embedded with crystals: Space, Icon, Amazone (in-ear headphones), and Mirage is of the (ear hook headphones). See the "read more" link below for more information.

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Intelligent Designs: Edward Tufte Champions Truth and Beauty in Analytical Design

When information needs to be communicated, Edward Tufte demands both truth and beauty. He is the father of analytical design and a visionary in driving for optimal integration of purposefulness and aesthetics in design. Fran Smith has written a very good summary of Tufte's history, work, and influence. See the "read more" link below for the Stanford Magazine story.

 

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Everything you ever wanted to know about AJAX but were afraid to ask...

This aims to be the simplest possible AJAX example, using only static HTML files. Examples can be tried on the website, or downloaded and run locally. First, there is a (short) explanation on the DOM, then on the XML HTTP Request Object and finally the two are combined to make AJAX. A more useful example with a PHP-driven backend is also available.



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Palm Hires iPhone Designer

I find it interesting and heartening that designers are seen as critical and central to a company's future success. The article below reports that the key iPhone designer was hired by competitor Palm in the hopes that Palm may be able to come up with a design as good or perhaps better than the amazing iPhone one. Quite apart from the details of this particular story, it is interesting how important design has become.



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Adopting Web 2.0 Externally but not Internally

A couple of recent announcements from two large, very well-known organizations provides some interesting data points on how Web 2.0 is affecting the product designs and business processes of otherwise very traditional institutions. Both USA Today and the U.S. Patent and Trademark office have recently unveiled strategies for letting their users use two-way Web capabilities to contribute directly to the products and services they offer. And many other mainstream companies, such as Pepsi as well as GM and XM Radio have been exploring externally-facing Web 2.0 concepts in their products for a while now.


See the article for more: More organizations shift to Web 2.0 while IT departments remain wary