Gap between final user and developers!
Difference of culture
Depending on the organisation sometimes business has the problem, sometime IT: Some companies are very IT oriented, have the latest release of software but don’t care about the users.
Don’t allow users to use what they want to use because of security.
Other kind of companies are led by marketing or business -> more focus on the end user
Integration with existing systems
Much of the data of value to organizations has been collected over the years by existing enterprise information systems. Much of the programming investment resides in applications on those same systems. The challenge for developers of enterprise applications is how to reuse and commoditize these existing information assets.
To achieve this goal, application developers need standard ways to access middle-tier and back-end services such as database management systems and transaction monitors.
Security
More than ever, information systems security is on the minds of IT managers and system architects. That's because protecting information assets to maximize their value can jeopardize that very value. Traditionally, IT departments have been able to maintain a relatively high level of control over the environment of both servers and clients. When information assets are exposed in less-protected environments, it becomes increasingly important to maintain tight security over the most sensitive assets, while allowing seemingly unencumbered access to others.
One of the difficulties in integrating disparate systems is providing a unified security model. Single sign on across internal application for instance is important to creating a positive user experience with the applications. Security needs to be compatible with existing mechanisms.
Yahoo story:
Back in 2000 was the no 1 search engine
Ask audience: Do you remember what was the user experience?
-> first success of google was due to good user experience, search was fast (not good algorythm)
When you break it down, an intuitive user experience has a variety of characteristics:
Effective – supports goal accomplishment
Efficient – allows rapid task completion
Engaging – Offers enjoyable day-to-day operation
Easy to learn – supports rapid initial skill aqusition and expanded skill development with experience
Error free – prevents errors and supports error recovery
And to support these 5 E’s, it has to be personalised, enable the user to collaborate with others in the context of the task at hand, all while completely abstracting and automating all backend processes.
First business applications where you will use RIAs
RIAs which support and assist decision making.
A simple, intuitive user experience which aggregates a single screen information from different systems to enable faster decision.
Information displayed visually is always easier than large Excel spreadsheet and it is no coincidence that the biggest players in business intelligence have turned to Adobe technologies, namely the Flash platform to meet these needs
The third type of application, relates to eCommerce and online sales.
Select products, media players
The last type of application, the "Social" and collaborative - and here we find the ability to integrate Web 2.0 technonolgies in enterprise applications
Twitter clients
Facebook games
Rationalization -> Remove fields/tabs on screens
Harmonization -> making the screens look/behave the same way
Simplification -> 10 screens into 1
How have we gotten here?
Client/server web revolution caused a loss of end user functionality (was forced to reduce end user capabilities in favour of easiness of distribution) and now end users want the functionality back.
Same forces driving consumerisation of IT trends.
User expectations have changed
Demographics of enterprise is changing
Rapidly changing business models
Desire to extend existing IT infrastructure investments to more users
Occasional use of applications – must be easy to use or they will never be used
The extended enterprise of customers and partners simply won’t use difficult apps
Enterprise software architecures don’t translate to intuitive user experience
Software developers looking for tooling that supports rapid application evolution
Technical challenges of traditional enterprise UI approaches
Web has become preferred app distribution method for management reasons
Data centric design techniques don’t prioritise usability first
HTML/JS/AJAX applications are costly to maintain & lack enterprise preferred object-oriented coding techniques
As enterprises create new business processes and improve existing ones, increasingly they will face pressure to deliver these processes as user-centric applications that offer the types of intuitive experiences we’re all experiencing in our lives as consumers (iPhone, social networking etc.).
Contrasting the contrast system-centric applications with user-centric applications, you can see a new and different set of requirements are emerging. We are well placed in many of these dimensions and continue to innovate to deliver better than any other company on the vision of user-centric computing.
Enterprise systems of the past worried about transaction scalability and reliability not until the end of the development effort was thought given to the usability of the application… In industries where success is measured by how well you serve your customer / citizen, we have seen common patterns emerge in customer acquisition and customer service where usability, automation of processes and the ability to effectively communicate with your customers is critical. This is where Adobe technology best fits.
Productivity:
Line of business and IT departments expect shorter development times, ability to customize, adapt and maintain
Customers in the enterprise today assume that software solutions deliver productivity as a given (reduce costs & processes, shorten development times etc.). To even be considered, you have to deliver productivity at a base level. But this is not sufficient- everyone delivers productivity. Customers expect more from their applications…
Collaboration:
To take enterprises to the “modern era” software companies need to connect people in the context of business processes and map to the way people work today. They need to deliver more social work solutions that increase collaboration.
Consumerization:
the whole phenomenon around consumerization revolves around users expecting more from their enterprise applications. To “delight the customer” needs to be at the center of enriching the end-user experience through enhanced collaboration.
The failure of system centric approach to these types of applications was no fault of IT. Frankly it was too hard, too costly and they were constrained by the complexity of the client technologies (SAP gui, Siebel gui, etc.) which were hard to change and difficult to extend -- not to mention the challenges associated with customizing the apps to support unique business processes.
So it was up to the employee to get trained on the systems and then toggle btw screens, aggregate information manually and wait for IT to make the needed system updates.
Now designers are working hand in hand with the development teams –and a new level of experience is available to enterprise. Enterprise software has to deliver on user expectations, with the same level of intuitiveness & usability people experience on consumer based sites.
User-centric processes are collaborative by their very nature, and enterprises are looking for ways to provide better services by connecting people from within the application – be that instant messaging, sharing screens or fully integrated video connectivity inside and outside your organization.
Call center application – for handling customer calls
A Flex-based application that sits upon a myriad of Adobe enterprise systems, including our CRM implementation and our Dylan product catalogue and order placement engine.
Not a product that can be sold to customers, nor a solution accelerator.
It is however a great example of what is possible and a great example of how to use our technology
Has not been designed with re-use in mind
Call center application – for handling customer calls
A Flex-based application that sits upon a myriad of Adobe enterprise systems, including our CRM implementation and our Dylan product catalogue and order placement engine.
Not a product that can be sold to customers, nor a solution accelerator.
It is however a great example of what is possible and a great example of how to use our technology
Has not been designed with re-use in mind
First of all we went off to the call centers and we took a lot of video of agents receiving calls from customers
We weren’t just interested in what was happening on their screens
We were also interested in what was going on on their desks, in their cubicles, how they were reacting to different customer questions etc.
We noticed that they were using a notepad and postits a lot – apparently the CRM system crashed a lot, so they were having to write things down
We noticed that there was a cheat sheet of the most common process pinned to their wall
We noticed the “meercat” effect: heads popping up frantically above cubicle walls looking for help answering a question
We noticed that weighty training manuals were hidden in a drawer beneath their desk
From there, we went and interviewed many more people: trainers, call center managers, Adobe managers, Adobe executive team and the project sponsors to get their view on pain points and where improvements could be made
We took a good look at the different tasks that the agents had to perform on a daily basis
We noticed that there was much room for improvment in some of these processes.
Typically, most processes were tied to the systems, meaning that a process would have to adapt itself to how a system worked and not the other way round
The steps in the processes were often too long and too complicated, demanding the agent to switch between different systems and different user interfaces
There was too much room for error between all of the systems that the agents were having to use- they were having to manually copy and paste data from one system to another
There were band aids. By band aids, I mean there were processes conceived years ago, and to adapt an old process to new requirements, additional steps were included, making it even more complex
These processes had not been entirely re-thought.
And finally we looked at the systems themselves.
An agent had to typically use a dozen different systems throughout their daily work schedule.
This is a screenshot of one of them: CRM
Agents had many complaints about the systems they had to use, but the system they disliked the most was CRM
CRM was slow, it crashed a lot and there were regular time out issues, meaning that agents would often lose work
There was no progressive disclosure- all of the functionality was displayed and was not filtered depending on an agent’s role or step within a particular process
There was little information hierarchy- data was presented at the same visual level, meaning that quickly scanning a screen to find something was very difficult
There was no data visualization to help agents quickly understand a given situation- just text and forms
And call-to-action items: buttons, drop down lists, navigation links etc. were very small, hard to detect and dotted all around the interface.
Our conclusion therefore was that agents had too many tools and were having to memorize too many processes
And if you have a multitude of slow, cumbersome tools and a bunch of overly complicated processes you will get frustrated agents. And this has a direct impact on customer satisfaction.
Call center management told us that they had a real problem with agent churn rate and in their view, this was directly related to the processes and tools they were having to use. We discovered that to train an agent on the tools and processes would typically take about a month, getting them up to speed would take 2-3 months and the churn rate was 6 months.
It therefore became apparent that we should be providing agents with an all-in-one, process-driven solution.
First thing we had to address was the processes.
We took data from the process documents and training manuals, and plotted it out into a huge process map, so that we could take a global look at all of the different steps, actions and systems that the agents were having to use
For a given task, we were then able to plot different user paths over the process map
And then we were able to understand how we could eventually optimize certain processes, creating shortcuts, deleting steps and essentially compressing the time need to complete any given task.
Once we had gained a better picture about how we were going to improve processes, we could then start to create the user interface.
The first step in creating an interface is the wireframing phase
This is an essential phase as it allows a designer to rapidly create a multitude of different scenarios and user paths without thinking about the visual design (these are often in monochrome)
Very early on, designers will then test these different scenarios on real users. The fact that the wireframes are basic monochrome mock-ups means that users will concentrate on functionality rather than aesthetic appeal and this will glean important feedback about the functionality before the visual design stage
Once the wireframes have been approved by users, business and project stake holders, they are then transformed into a visual design
A visual designer will use colour, iconography, layout and choreography to create visual hierarchy and visual cues within an interface, bringing to the forefront the elements that the user needs at any given moment.
A prototype was also produced, allowing for a real sense of how the application would appear under a set of different scenarios.
The visual design mock-ups were approved by users, business and project stake holders before passing off to the development team.
To end the presentation, I’d like to provide a few examples on how we were able to maximise productivity through improving the interface.
Selling in CRM isn’t easy.
Firstly, a sales agent would have to go the Adobe website to relay information about products, upgrades, cross sells, upsells to the customer.
Then, to process an order for a customer, an agent would have to go into our knowledge base to download the latest price list spreadsheet.
They would then open the spreadsheet and trawl through the 2000 rows to find the SKU code to enter into CRM
Once entered into CRM, a price would be returned and the agent would collect the customer’s contact and payment details and process the order
For an extremely simple purchase, an experience agent would take about 4 minutes
In Hendrix, we aggregated all of that selling functionality
An agent can quickly locate the required product in an easy to use catalogue-style interface
Clicking on a product will expand to give more information and this can also be used for training purposes
Adding the product to the customer’s cart will first involve configuring it (ie selecting the language, platform, version etc.) and at this stage the agent will be proposed with an upsell product that they can try to convince the customer to purchase instead
From the cart, a number of cross sell products are also proposed
When the customer is ready to purchase, the agent identifies the customer, finding or creating a customer record and then processes the order
This entire process takes a minute. This is a 75% reduction compared to the same process before.
Dark blue: the price you sell to customers
Light blue: price now, for next 24 hours
To set context for our roadmap, it is important to understand what LiveCycle is today. We released LiveCycle ES2 in November of 2009. It is based on three key pillars: RIA Services, Process Management, and Document Services.
The reason for Process Management being the bridge in this diagram is to show that the differentiator between consumer RIAs and enterprise RIAs is that there is always a process behind enterprise RIAs
Adobe Flash Island allows you to create rich Internet components that support integration, data exchange, and interaction with applications built with Web Dynpro for ABAP .
The Web Dynpro framework provides UI elements that dramatically reduce development effort and enforce a unified look and feel of Web Dynpro-based applications.
However, several use cases require richer UI capabilities that are not available with this set of UI elements.
To support such use cases, Adobe Flash Island is supported within the Web Dynpro for ABAP framework in SAP NetWeaver 7.0 EhP1.