User Experience – A Little Rant Again

I had a bit of a negative post yesterday, and it got me thinking of these two posts.

I’ve said some of this stuff before, but I want to bring it all into a slightly different context.

Good user experience is…

Good user experience is not about forcing me to follow your atomic implementation of a feature. What do I mean by this? Let’s take look at some examples of getting it right (IMHO) from Oracle.

An Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS) web service is made up of a module with one or more templates, each with one or more handlers. We could define our service by defining a module, template and a handler separately, because that’s how the underlying implementation of an ORDS web service works. It’s fine, but it’s a bit over the top if I just want a quick little web service based on a query. That’s why we have been given the DEFINE_SERVICE procedure, allowing us to do all that other stuff in a single call (see here). For simple services this is all you need.

The database scheduler is a complex beast. We can define loads of things like schedules, programs, arguments, jobs classes, windows and of course jobs. That’s fine, but 99% of the time we just want a simple job, and the CREATE_JOB procedure allows us create one in a single call (see here).

In both cases we can choose between doing things the long/verbose way, or use the “cheat code” and do stuff in a single call. This is exactly the sort of thing I like when I’m using a feature. I want to know the flexibility is there if I need it, but if 99% of my requirements don’t, I want the cheat code so I can do what I need to do and move on. This also makes the feature more accessible to new people…

Good user experience is not…

As I mentioned above, good user experience is not about forcing me to follow your atomic implementation of a feature. Someone should take a step back and ask what would “normal” users really like? The answer is probably giving them an option to zone out and get all the prerequisites and config done for them. It’s not making them spend a weekend trying to figure out how to enable a feature, then finding it doesn’t really work properly anyway…

I’m a generalist. I have to work with lots of different products. When I open the docs and I see a list of prerequisites, and then multiple commands to actually set stuff up my heart sinks. I want a “we’ll do everything for you” option. That might sound funny because of my history, and if companies did that it would make my website redundant, but I feel we need to progress. We’ve been doing this nuts & bolts crap for too long. If I can automate it, Oracle can automate it. If Oracle can automate it, why don’t they?

I don’t want to name and shame. I’ve made some positive comments about Oracle in the previous section, but you know there are a whole bunch of Oracle things I could use as examples of what not to do. Oracle aren’t alone here. It applies to lots of other companies too.

But Tim, I want to…

I can already hear people typing their responses about their need to be in control and their obsessive configuration disorder. Shut up. I don’t care. The chances are, if you are reading this post, you are probably one of the people that can cope with all this tech, but there are many people who can’t, or don’t want to.

Won’t someone think of the children customers

I am a customer. My company is a customer. I can think of two things my company refuse to pay for because the functionality in question is unsupportable if I’m not available. Those are features we need, but won’t buy because they are overly complex for normal people to do well.

Now you can argue that cloud services will solve all these issues, but cloud adoption varies between regions, and maybe people will not pick your cloud. My company are a perfect example of that. We’ve consolidated on Azure, and although we don’t run any Oracle databases there yet, if we run Oracle on the cloud, it will probably be on Azure.

If you heard someone say, “I used to get a punch in the face every day, but now it’s only once a week. Things are good!”, you would think they were crazy. Less bad is not the same as good. I often think companies bring out tools and utilities that are “less bad” than what they had before. Not actually “good”. If you have been in the trenches, “less bad” might feel “good”, but it’s not.

I realise this is another rant, but I think it’s a subject that is worth a rant. I use a wide variety of tech from a number of companies, and some of them get on my nerves at times, because it feels like user experience is an after thought. You can’t expect everyone to no-life the learning curve for your products. I’m just saying how I feel, and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone here!

Cheers

Tim…

PS. I’m playing a bit fast and loose with the term user experience in this post, but hopefully you get what I mean…

Oracle Applications User Experience (OAUX) News

I’m no UX expert, but it’s a subject I’m interested in. The contents of this post is me forwarding (with permission) the latest OAUX newsletter.

NEW OAUX STRATEGY AND ROADMAP EBOOK: The OAUX team’s updated cloud UX strategy ebook contains information about what guides the design of Oracle’s cloud UX as we continue to evolve. It is based on our research with Oracle’s applications users, and offers you a glimpse at the roadmap and where we’re planning to invest time and resources. Download a copy at tinyurl.com/UXstrategy.

HOW PARTNERS ARE TAILORING UX FOR CUSTOMERS: Perhaps you’ve already seen our recent post on Oracle platinum partner Boxfusion Consulting, which worked with members of the OAUX team to build a custom solution for a customer based on Oracle UX design patterns. Boxfusion has written more about the project and offers screenshots of what they built.

R13 UX HIGHLIGHTS: Have you had a chance to review what you’ll find in Release 13 of the Oracle Applications Cloud? This release leverages the flexibility of the cloud to give customers more control of the cloud’s user interface (UI). Learn more about UX highlights of R13:

NOW AVAILABLE — Oracle Conversational UI for the Enterprise RDK: The OAUX team announces the release of another RDK in a post on the OAUX Blog, “Oracle Conversational UI for the Enterprise Rapid Development Kit (RDK).” Conversational UIs are enterprise-level chatbots that can help streamline a workflow. For more about conversational UIs, see this post on the OAUX blog.

TIMELINE FOR VIRTUAL REALITY: Are you wondering how virtual reality (VR) might be integrated into your company’s software? Tawny Le, a member of the OAUX Emerging Technologies team, or The AppsLab, writes about her research into VR and where it will fit in enterprise systems. Her answer may surprise you.

MORE EMERGING TECH: Check out this short video on Instagram, where one of our OAUX developers moves a Sphero ball through a maze using a Muse headband. There’s also a new post on TheAppsLab blog about using push notifications with the Amazon Echo and devices like it.

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle Applications User Experience (OAUX) : Social Media Channels

If you are interested in User Experience (UX), you can keep up with the latest news on these new channels from the Oracle Applications User Experience (OAUX) team.

Of course, you can still keep up to date with information from the Usable Apps website.

Happy UXing… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Cloud UX Strategy Day : #OAUX

I spent yesterday at the Cloud User Experience (UX) Strategy Day at Oracle HQ. I’m not really the target audience for this event as I’m not a front-end developer and at the moment I know almost nothing about Oracle Cloud Apps, but I am gradually being drawn into this area by a number of external forces.

I can’t really speak about the content of the day because of NDA and because I’m a total newbie, so I will make a fool of myself if I try to speak like I know this stuff. 🙂

I’ve been a casual observer of the stuff the UX team do for a few years and each time I see something by them I understand a little more. It’s like an onion. You have to keep peeling back the layers to see the next layer down. I’m still stuck at the outer layers, but I’m starting to know enough to know I don’t know enough…

I think it’s a pretty interesting subject, regardless of the discipline you work in. It will definitely influence your perception of what you do. If you are interested in User Experience (UX) check out the resources on the Usable Apps site.

Hopefully I will get to come back next year and I will be able to check out the next layer of the onion. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Microsoft Outlook : When Bad UX Attacks!

I guess there are lots of problems with the User eXperience (UX) of Microsoft Outlook, but the one that kills me is the popup menu in the folders pane.

I’m not sure how other people use this, but for me, the number one thing I do is “Delete All”, closely followed by “Mark All as Read”. I have a bunch or rules that “file” irrelevant crap, which I later scan through and typically delete en masse.

So what’s the problem?

The folder operations are higher up the menu, so I’m constantly doing “Delete Folder”, rather than “Delete All”, which drives me mad. Especially when I don’t notice and all my rules start failing.

Like I said, I don’t know how other people use this stuff, but I would hazard a guess that the clean-up operations are used more frequently than the actual folder maintenance operations. This is one situation when having the most frequently used sections of the menu being promoted to the top would be really handy.

Of course, I could just pay more attention… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…