The user experience

I have been thinking once again about how much the user experience impacts the take up of broad based workforce/people applications. I wrote earlier about calloborative applications needing to be low friction, I feel that this must translate to a good user experience. None of this is new, so why the post.

I have noticed that most vendors in the marketplace have been busy over the last year or so and upgraded their interfaces. Now system have colourful, smart, "sexy" looking user interfaces. I wonder does this automatically translate to a good, no excellent user experience? Going back to my days using a Mac and reflect that a good user experience was not about colourful, smart and "sexy" looking interfaces, it is about usability. It is about how easily the user of your product to complete there tasks.

Now back to broad based workforce applications. They must be easy for the user to complete there tasks, provide enough guidance so as to help them complete the task but not to get in the way. When you are dealing with complex applications this a difficult activity. I have been using gmail now about about 2 months and I find it fantastic, however the activity of sending emails is fairly simple (email software developers may disagree), when compared with developing a tool for managers to use to complete your annual salary review process, and this is only one aspect of a broad based workforce application!

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