No More “Ready-Fire-Aim” User Experiences

On the importance of early usability prototyping..

"I'm sure there must be a big rule written somewhere, that I can't seem to locate, that states that all enterprise software must have a less-than-optimal user experience, especially the interface.

There are, of course, examples of where this is not true. Although my point may be a bit exaggerated, too many agree with my view, especially customers, whom I care about most.

In the consumer world, there is more of a tendency to find out just how a consumer will use a product, then focus engineering efforts to build and improve on that process. In the enterprise development world, we tend to build a service or application that serves a need, or more often, meets a spec. (I say we and I readily include Sun in this, though it's a widespread issue in the enterprise software industry.) Only after we build the foundation and frame the house do we ask the "interface" folks to slap on a GUI and maybe (maybe) look at how to improve the usability."   continued ...   (Via JohnnyL)