Kathy Miedema, Oracle Applications User Experience
All of the user experience improvements in the new Web-based Agile 9.3 Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) boil down to two things: This software is more efficient and easier to use than it was before. New features and keyboard shortcuts help customers navigate more quickly, enter data faster, and complete tasks with far fewer clicks, which leads to a dramatic improvement in productivity in the PLM suite of applications. The PLM software helps manufacturing engineering companies, such as companies that design and build everything from electronics to medical devices, manage the entire life of a product, from its conception to its distribution, sale, service, and disposal. Users cover a broad spectrum, including component engineers, design engineers, program managers, commodity or cost management engineers, and buyers. PLM software tools enable all of those who are involved in the life of the product to access, communicate, and manage information about the product. Agile 9.3’s new time-saving features are the result of two years spent researching, designing, and testing the product suite. Oracle’s User Experience (UX) team worked closely with users from several leading manufacturing companies in the high tech, life sciences, and consumer packaged goods industries to collect feedback and then improve on the designs for the Agile 9.3 release. Customers participated in site visits, usability testing, and one-on-one research. “The consistent involvement of customers throughout the project had a significant impact on the final product -- sometimes taking us in directions that we had not expected,” said Joel Nave, a Group Manager in Oracle’s User Experience team who guided the research and design of Agile 9.3. The goals of boosting end user efficiency and accuracy in the upgraded Agile 9.3 meant: “We simplified what was there before,” said Madhuri Kolhatkar, Director of Oracle’s Applications Unlimited User Experience team. ”In this case, less is more for our users. Now they don’t have to hunt for things.” Video tours, shortcut cheat sheets, and standard messages were introduced to help users pick up on improvements more quickly. Another powerful new feature, Nave said, is the type-ahead suggestions for lists. It seems like a simple idea, he said, but users are finding that it’s a huge time-saver. “When we were doing our initial research, we realized how much time users spent selecting list values. They knew the value they wanted, but had to go through several steps and dialogs to select it. And it wasn’t only the steps that took time; waiting for a large list to load was time-consuming as well.” In Agile 9.3, users can simply begin typing, and this feature suggests text that the user can select from. What sometimes took 30 seconds before, now takes 3 or 4 seconds. “That feature really impacts time-on-task,” Nave said. “This is a big winner for end users.” The tables in the product suite have also undergone significant changes. Users can now add to a table using the type-ahead feature, drag objects onto the table, or paste copied values to the table. These features increase accuracy as well as efficiency. “Users are assured that when dragging or copying a number, they will definitely add the right item,” Nave said. Another improvement in the table is inline editing of the table itself. In previous releases of Agile, the user needed to select rows to edit, click on edit, input the new content, and save. Now, a user can simply click a cell, change the content, and save it. Two new features, QuickView and the Navigator, help reduce the need to navigate through pages. The QuickView feature allows users to view and take action on the primary content of an object, without having to navigate to the object itself. For example, if the user is viewing a Bill of Materials (BOM) and would like to add an attachment for an item in the BOM, the user can launch the QuickView for the item and add the attachment without having to navigate away from the BOM. The Navigator feature allows users to move search results, BOM, and program structures to the left pane of their screen, and then navigate through the list and see details in the content area. For example, a user can move search results to the Navigator and then look through each result without having to move from a search-results page to the object and then back to the search results to view the next object. “The Navigator is another concept that has been well received,” Nave said. Users will also see new keyboard shortcuts in the Agile 9.3 software, such as copy, paste, quick access to the Home page, and Custom Search. The redesigned suite of applications includes Product Collaboration, Product Governance and Compliance, Product Quality Management, Product Cost Management, and Product Portfolio Management and Engineering Collaboration. Visit http://www.oracle.com/applications/agile/index.html for more information about the Agile 9.3 product suite.
With just a few key strokes, users can prompt a feature that offers type-ahead suggestions for lists. It seems simple, but users who tested the new Agile 9.3 software said it saves them a lot of time.
Agile 9.3’s new inline table editing feature reduces the steps a user takes to change the contents of the table.
This screenshot shows what the new feature QuickView looks like in the upgraded Agile 9.3 software. The tool reduces navigation through several pages for users by allowing them to quickly view and take action on item content.
