User experience is an important dimension of software development, but it is not the entire thing.
Sure, a "positive" user experience can increase adoption, but if the business requires things to occur in a precise way at a precise time, then the software has to enforce that, even if it means incorporating unpleasant and unnatural methods to ensure it happens exactly the way it must.
Accomplishing this means you need to be agile in your thinking, able to see connections and intersections in new and different ways, and not be constrained by conventional thinking.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Monday, October 4, 2010
Understanding business process can create a better user experience
Software consumes, transforms and presents information. It is utterly about communication. And consumption, or capture of information, depending on the business activity supported, may be of far greater importance than how the information is represented. This is particularly true if unstructured data is feeding into the system.
As I discussed in my previous post, information simply does not have the physical or conceptual limitations of a cup holder or door knob. Thus, information design is not just about the presentation or graphical layer, but the structure as well -- data modeling, information architecture and perhaps, most important (in my experience, anyway), business process modeling, so that you have a detailed and granular understanding of the processes the user must go thru in performing a set of tasks that intersect with the software system. Process modeling helps better design the interactions and hand-offs with touch points within and outside of the system. It also helps understand the information types required, the actors involved, the constraints required by the system and the organization, additional systems or tools that are necessary, and the inputs and outputs that drive the user through to completion.
Bottom line, the better you can understand the business and its requirements, the better and more meaningful experience you can create.
As I discussed in my previous post, information simply does not have the physical or conceptual limitations of a cup holder or door knob. Thus, information design is not just about the presentation or graphical layer, but the structure as well -- data modeling, information architecture and perhaps, most important (in my experience, anyway), business process modeling, so that you have a detailed and granular understanding of the processes the user must go thru in performing a set of tasks that intersect with the software system. Process modeling helps better design the interactions and hand-offs with touch points within and outside of the system. It also helps understand the information types required, the actors involved, the constraints required by the system and the organization, additional systems or tools that are necessary, and the inputs and outputs that drive the user through to completion.
Bottom line, the better you can understand the business and its requirements, the better and more meaningful experience you can create.
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