Author: Velynda Prakhantree, Principal Usability Engineer - Oracle Applications User Experience
It's Tuesday April 15th, 2008, 12:08 p.m. You're in Denver, Colorado, finishing a tasty panini at a packed upscale deli on the 16th Street mall. With a couple of colleagues, you're remarking how the morning COLLABORATE08 conference sessions were more informative and promising than you'd predicted. You're optimistic and thirsty for more details on Oracle's next generation of products.
You'll have to fill me in on the next session later, you request as you stand, brushing a few sandwich crumbs from your business clothes. I've got a special appointment with the Oracle User Experience team.
After glancing at your email confirmation, you head across the street to a private conference room in a neighboring hotel. You approach the red-and-black, cloth-draped reception table where two friendly-looking Oracle staff await your arrival.
Gozel Aamoth and Teena Singh of the Oracle Applications User Experience Team coordinated the customer experience at COLLABORATE08.
Hello! a user experience team member greets you, shakes your hand, and spies your conference name badge. So glad you could come today. I'm Teena.
Nice to meet you, you warmly reply, intrigued by the partially obscured entrance. Teena leads you inside, and as you walk through the sizeable room, you observe nine different stations, divided by tall, heavy curtain panels. At each station, two or three people are deeply engaged in conversation around a computer screen.
Here we are, says Teena, as she stops at station #7 and introduces you to Sean, an Oracle usability engineer. Sean invites you to sit with him and a note-taker, Chris.
Principal Usability Engineer Sean Rice interviews a customer using Oracle prototype software at COLLABORATE08.
Today, Sean begins, we're going to look at a brand new prototype of a Human Resources application designed to support HR Managers in their daily tasks. Instead of just showing you a demo, we'd like you to actually test drive the prototype using some realistic tasks we've created. As you use the prototype, we want your honest feedback on what you like, don't like, what's intuitive or not, and how this would work for you in your real job. It's very important to us to know what end users like you have to say, because you are the people who will ultimately use this product. Based on your feedback, we're going to make design recommendations to the product team, so they can make changes before it is coded.
And so the customer feedback session begins...
You see, you are an end user of Oracle Applications, and today you're the star of the show.
Throughout the feedback session, Oracle usability engineers are recording your every reaction to the new prototype as you navigate through new functions, screens, and information. They observe where you hesitate or show confusion, ask you what you're thinking, and probe to understand what could be improved to make your job easier.
And for you, it's exciting to glimpse the next generation of applications your company may soon be using. That's a treat previously enjoyed by the decision makers in your company. It's also very satisfying to have a voice, to have your feedback heard. As a bonus, you were able to conveniently participate during your conference stay.
An hour flies by, and you can't believe how the session went so quickly. You're impressed with the level of detail structured into every task you performed and every question you were asked. You get the impression that Oracle puts a lot of effort into understanding what real end users want, need, and prefer.
And you're right.
Hundreds of end users participate in usability testing and research at Oracle every year. We do a lot of work in our in-house laboratory facilities, but we don't miss other opportunities to interact with and collect feedback from our customers. And where do large groups of Oracle customers gather? Conferences! Particularly, user group conferences like COLLABORATE08.
Conducting onsite usability testing at conferences is something Oracle is doing now, and aims to do even more. It can be a challenge getting the right people to participate in the session. What do I mean by "right"? Selecting end users fitting the profile of people who either directly use (or would use), an application. What sets usability testing apart from many other customer-facing activities is that nearly all of our work requires direct input from the end users of an application.
Department managers, IT Directors, and other decision makers are often consulted by other Oracle groups, such as Product Management, Strategy, or Development, to determine general functional, technical, and business requirements. They provide vital information, of course, but what they can't tell us are all those details about what it really takes for end users to get their jobs done. Only the end users can tell us that.
When it comes time to design, you can't create a great user experience without involving the users.
So for conferences, we need to partner with the organizers to contact attendees and make advance appointments with the right kinds of users. Participants need to answer some screening questions to make sure that the job they do matches the role used in the prototype. For example, if we are testing a prototype for creating sales forecasts, we need to make sure participants actually create forecasts in their real jobs.
Thanks to months of preparation, cooperation with organizers, and partnerships with many customers through Oracle's Global Design Partners program, nearly 75 participants gave us essential feedback on one of the seven different Fusion prototypes at COLLABORATE08.
Will all that effort make a difference in our products? You bet. Consulting the end users makes all the difference. You really are the stars and we design the whole experience just for you.
If you'd like more information about usability at Oracle, or want to get involved through our Global Design Partners program, feel to contact me, velynda.prakhantree@oracle.com, or teena.singh@oracle.com.
