Oracle employs over a hundred professionals who look after the quality of user interfaces. The combined forces do not include UI engineers, external Web site staff, or front end programmers. That number doesincludes usability engineers, interaction designers, ethnographers, all the usual characters found in other Human Computer Interaction departments.
Contrary to popular belief, we spend very little time making screens "pretty." We expend most of our energy to ensuring that the applications are usable. This means that the functionality contained matches real world tasks, that the navigation is intuitive, and that the user interface is efficient and well laid out. We employ marketing techniques, statistical analysis, reference accessibility laws, perform evaluations, run surveys, and broker technical and business deals to build the best of breed and high quality applications. BTW -- here is our recruitment form, just in case you want some gift cards and would like to be a participant in the lab. (It does not hurt at all. We test the software, not you!)
The backgrounds of our staff vary, but tend to cluster around industrial designers and architects in one category, psychologist and cognitive scientists in the second, and freshly minted human factors /information design graduates in the last category. In the UI group, boundaries are created by specific tasks, professional domains, or even business flows. Usually, a given designer or engineer supports four or more products, or a suite that encompasses a family of apps. Often, the staff serves in review mode for some applications, while others are addressed in the context of the full user centered design cycle, from requirements gathering, through designs iterations, and then finally testing. Applications range from human resource, through developers tools, middle tier consoles, and even collabware applications.
We do not have as many artistes perhaps. I recently ran into a flock of them at a very hip design conference in San Francisco. The warehouse where it was held and the food served (I did not ask what I was eating, in some cases) were very stylish and exotic. I felt quite out of place without body piercings, a snowboarder hat, or any tattoos. My suburban, corporate office park profile stood out like a nerd at a frat house. Our most common internal profile is closer to a commercial designer. Following the artistic muse too fervently often results in quick marginalization. User centered design practitioners must understand and consider business, technology, and legal aspects when shaping software, or their usability concerns will never be heard. I plan to elaborate on that a bit during the main conference for our profession.
UI staff reside in several areas. The largest is the AppsUX group, run by Jeremy Ashley. What follows is a group that comprises of servers, tools, and UI standards. Oracle Enterprise Manager, Business Intelligence, Oracle Collaboration Suite, Oracle Retail, among others, also have their own organizations. I tend to bridge them and work on overarching policy issues, or as a project specialist for hire.
In terms of personalities, we have the full cast of the "Breakfast Club." We even throw parties and invite families. We also have representation from most nations: US, India, Thailand, UK, Poland, Russia, Israel, Canada, China, Korea, Thailand, Mexico, Australia, Georgia (just kidding, Travis).
That does it for a quick profile and an introduction. Next installment will focus on "User Interface Guidelines: When they are useful, and when they are evil."
