Kathy Miedema, Oracle Applications User Experience

PeopleTools 8.50, which provides features and new technology to PeopleSoft applications and was just released in September 2009, delivers a fresh, contemporary user experience that includes many new user productivity enhancements, demonstrating Oracle's continued commitment to strengthening the PeopleSoft brand and product suite.

PeopleTools offers customers a way to update their PeopleSoft applications with the most current technology, says Jeff Robbins, Senior Director of PeopleTools Strategy at PeopleSoft. "PeopleTools 8.50 really focused on usability because of Oracle Applications Unlimited's commitment to continue to sell PeopleSoft applications," Robbins said. "And because we're going to continue to invest in and sell PeopleSoft applications -- even to brand-new customers, not just to people who are already using PeopleSoft -- we needed to be able to compete in the marketplace with niche vendors who have utilized the latest UI technologies in a brand-new application. In order to compete, we really had to address how we construct our pages, and how we build our applications from the perspective of usability. We had to address some of these areas so that we could deliver, to the marketplace, applications that look as current as our competitors. We took that opportunity to really focus 8.50 on overall usability, and incorporate some of these capabilities into our framework for building applications."

At Oracle OpenWorld in October 2009, the interest in PeopleTools 8.50 was very apparent. Hundreds of customers attended a session focusing on its new features, including what kind of user experience could be expected.

New features include navigational tools on the main menu, such as a recently-used list, "breadcrumbs" that help a user track where she has been in an application, and type-ahead lists. Improved customization and control of PeopleSoft grids also help boost productivity with features like a new ability to scroll through grids (tables), resize columns, drag and drop columns, freeze columns, and sort them.

Figure 1: Users can expand their view of a grid, or table, in PeopleTools 8.50, using the zoom function. The new feature is part of the improved control and customization now available in PeopleTools 8.50.

User experience team members also worked to improve the look and feel of PeopleTools 8.50, said Harris Kravatz, Oracle User Experience Manager. "With the new version, we were able to provide a fresher and more modern user experience. We were also able to provide users with more screen real estate by redesigning the menu."

Figure 2: The contemporary look and feel of the newly released PeopleTools 8.50 includes a subtle color combination, more appealing graphics, and animated progress status.

Figure 3: With the new related-content feature, PeopleTools 8.50 users can easily access discussions or links related to the task they are working on.

The new related-content feature provides easy-to-access collaboration tools such as wikis, blogs, tagging, and analytics.

Robbins said the changes users will see in PeopleTools 8.50 will allow them to customize other PeopleSoft applications, and boost productivity for users there as well.

By Misha Vaughan, Architect, Applications User Experience

This week, the User Experience Customer Participation Program is hosting an online webinar with Vince Casarez, Vice President of Product Management for Oracle WebCenter Suite.

Vince Casarez, Vice President of Oracle WebCenter Product Management

The Webinar, Enterprise 2.0 User Experiences with Oracle WebCenter Suite, received such a positive response the first time it was presented at an Oracle Usability Advisory Board meeting, that we decided to make it available to a wider audience.

Vince, who was recently named one of Oracle's Innovators, will discuss the features that make the recently released Oracle WebCenter Suite easier to use and more efficient. He'll talk about the new user experience that directly connects the user to the enterprise system, and showcase WebCenter's Enterprise 2.0 social computing capabilities that combine search, publishing, and knowledge management.

If you are catching this post before the event, and your organization is a member of the Oracle Customer Participation Program, you can still register by emailing Angela Johnston (seminar attendance instructions will be e-mailed to you in advance.) Want to become a member? Please contact Angela Johnston.

If you are reading this post after the event, please post your questions or comments for Vince here, and he'll get back to you.

Teena Singh. Principal Product Manager, Oracle Applications User Experience

For three years straight, the Human Capital Management (HCM) User Experience (UX) team has run an onsite product usability lab at the OHUG (Oracle Human Resources User Group) conference. This year OHUG was held from June 14-17 at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. For 2009, our team expanded its presence at the conference with a presentation on how the UX team designs the best user experiences by working directly with customers. The presentation informed conference attendees of the many ways they can get involved with our team and influence the design of Oracle applications through the Customer Participation Program (CPP) and the Oracle Usability Advisory Board.

HCM UX outlined four key ways in which customers can participate, starting with the easiest and least complex arrangement:

• Sign up for our quarterly CPP Newsletter


• Request a Usability Lab Tour


• Participate in one of our Customer Feedback Sessions


• Join our Usability Advisory Board.

The HCM UX team invited one of our most involved CPP Customers, The City of Las Vegas, to speak personally about their experience with user experience activities. Pat Dues, Enterprise Program Manager, and Kathleen Fauerbach, Enterprise Project Manager of the Las Vegas City Manager's Office, have engaged with our team in various ways, and helped give the audience first-hand knowledge of what it's like being an involved and contributing member of our CPP program. They also shared what they gained both personally and professionally from that experience.

After the presentation, I asked Pat and Kathleen to comment on how they felt their commitment was helping Oracle design the best user experiences, and how they felt they were more enriched from this experience.

Pat Dues and Kathleen Fauerbach of the City of Las Vegas, presenting with Aylin Uysal and Sean Rice of Oracle's Human Capital Management User Experience at OHUG, Las Vegas, June, 2009.

Oracle: You have toured the lab, you have been involved in a customer feedback session, and you are on the Oracle Usability Advisory Board. What is the time commitment for each of those activities, and what have you gained from your involvement?

Pat Dues: Each activity is unique. Regarding the labs being conducted here at OHUG, if you can still sign up, I highly recommend it. Frequently the labs run for about an hour. That is the minimal time commitment for attending a lab and giving some feedback. You are at the conference anyway. They are usually run at Oracle OpenWorld, COLLABORATE, OHUG, and the Higher Education User Group (HEUG)'s Alliance Conferences.

Kathleen Fauerbach: We were asked to participate in the labs at COLLABORATE last year in Denver. The two of us participated in the employee interaction and Pat participated as a Manager. Here is how it worked: We were given a script. The engineer sat right next to us and we had to describe what we were seeing on the screen, where we were looking, what we thought we should be seeing and where we thought we should be going. They actually took notes to make it a better interaction between the user and the application.

Then at Oracle OpenWorld, we tested a Web 2.0 Project Management application. Then they followed up with me the next month on a two-hour conference call, and asked me if this is what I wanted and what I liked. These engineers are serious about seeing what you need and what you want. They then take it to other customers and they get a collaborative opinion on what you need. It's not just an event; they carry through with what they are doing. That was very important to us.

Pat Dues: As far as the Oracle Usability Advisory Board, there are at least three meetings face-to-face each year. And, actually if you do join this year, in December we are hosting a meeting in Las Vegas. We are going to have our own usability person speak and he has some great ideas. If you go to the City's Web site you will see that usability was at the forefront of the design of our own Web site. Usability is something we have been very interested in and focused on at the City.

The meetings move around and that gives everybody the ability not to travel too much. If you have to travel a far distance one time, probably the next time the meeting will be closer and not as much travel will be required.

The meetings run about two days. It just depends on what the agenda is going to be. If we are going to be able to tour a lab, then we have either a morning or afternoon to tour - I always allocate a couple of days for the meetings.
We do have (periodic) administrative calls, too. We just had a call about a month ago. We talked about the prospective agenda for our next meeting.

We also have Working Groups that are formed within the advisory board that focus on various topics, such as mobile computing, Web 2.0, and consistency and design. All of us that are participants join up to one or more of the groups. We provide feedback, do some research, and stay involved with the Oracle people through the year. We allocate a couple of hours a month that you might be involved: either a call or working on something for your committee. It isn't a huge commitment, but it is very important that if you commit, you participate. That is the biggest thing--don't say you will do it and not do it. Oracle relies on all of our feedback and I think it's great that they are here to listen.

Both Pat and Kathleen felt like they were helping Oracle design the best user experience through their commitment to various CCP activities. They also felt they were gaining valuable knowledge, networking contacts, and usability vision for their own company through their involvement. The Applications UX team encourages this kind of relationship with customer organizations. Getting involved with our team extends beyond just using Oracle software; it means becoming informed users who influence Oracle applications, ultimately impacting your own personal user experiences.

Anna Wichansky, Senior Director, Applications User Experience and Chair, Oracle Usability Advisory Board

Back in April, I blogged about the Oracle Usability Advisory Board's strategic meeting on the next level of user experience for enterprise applications.
The good news is that some of these advancements will be discussed at Oracle OpenWorld, to be held at Moscone Center, San Francisco, California on October 11-15, 2009. Several members of the Applications User Experience group will make presentations throughout the week. In fact, this is the greatest opportunity yet for the Applications UX department to share its contributions to the next-generation design of Oracle Applications with customers. Organizers are expecting a record number of attendees at Moscone Center. Many customers have already indicated that usability is a big, if not the biggest, factor in purchasing enterprise software.

Let me give you a preview of what you will see at OpenWorld:

Sunday, October 11: Sunday is User Group Day at OpenWorld. At the Oracle Applications User Group (OAUG) Fusion Strategy Council Meeting, Floyd Teter of Jet Propulsion Laboratory will host Jeremy Ashley, Vice President, and Katie Candland, Director of Applications UX, as they provide an overview of how the next-generation Oracle Applications were designed. This work involved customer site visits, articulation of user requirements, design of workflows, and building and testing prototype software with end-users before developers began product coding. In designing a more consumer-like user experience, they strived to consolidate information into the fewest possible screens and reduce the number of steps to accomplish key tasks. The entire next-generation suite is built on a single visual interface framework, with the main controls laid out the same way in all products.

Monday, October 12: There are three important UX events:

The Oracle Usability Advisory Board customer panel will discuss how customer collaboration can improve the user experience. Panelists are Chuck Abell of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Sarah Gatenby of Santa Clara University, Carrie Medders of California State University East Bay, and Kim Murphy of Emerson. They are likely to mention the focus groups and surveys the board took part in to provide data on mobile applications, search, and social networking features, as well as to review next-generation software prototypes. They have also contributed their top 10 issues on existing enterprise software, not only to current software developers but also so that next-generation designers can benefit from them. They will discuss what they get from being on the board, and how they justify this activity to their organizations.

Sherry Mead, a User Experience Architect who chairs the Oracle Usability Advisory Board Working Group on Integration & Performance, will be on a panel about how search technologies can improve customers' overall experience with enterprise software. The panel will describe features for "smarter search," such as synonym matching, dictionary matching for misspellings, "fuzzy" search, and the progressive relaxation algorithm, currently available in Oracle Secure Enterprise Search. Sherry will also describe how Oracle's next-generation applications search is more like an Internet search engine than conventional, transactional search; it allows federated search across applications and task navigation by searching for any database object in the suite.

Also on Monday, Adrien Lazzaro, a Senior User Experience designer, will demonstrate the desktop widgets, which enable greater integration between PC desktop and enterprise applications, at the Unconference. This is a unique, informal, interactive venue in which speakers self-schedule their presentations at overlook locations in Moscone West, 3rd floor. Desktop widgets for Applications Unlimited sales applications, as well as Oracle Worklist and Oracle Secure Enterprise Search, will be shown. These address the next-level usability needs for a consumer-like experience by providing simpler navigation to key functions, a collaborative workspace with widgets securely embedded in portals, and real-time data for users.

On Tuesday, October 13, Jeremy Ashley and Patanjali Venkatacharya will give a presentation entitled "User Experience Innovations -- Oracle's end-to-end user experience platform". This presentation highlights enhancements that are available today through Fusion Middleware 11gR1. These include innovations exposed through Oracle WebCenter, Application Development Framework (ADF), common Metadata Services (MDS), Web2.0 Services (WebCenter Services), and more. The backstory here involves how the Applications User Experience team worked proactively with the entire platform organization, including the Oracle Fusion Middleware development team, to tightly integrate UX requirements with core processes, at a variety of levels in the entire software stack. This resulted in a complete, open, and integrated end-to-end user experience platform which allows Applications Unlimited product line user experiences to co-exist with one another on the same standards-based environment.

More information on all of these presentations is available in our Events column. I look forward to meeting our readers in person at Openworld 2009.

Anna Wichansky, Senior Director, Applications User Experience and Chair, Oracle Usability Advisory Board

As blog editor for the usableapps.oracle.com Web site, my role is to present issues about enterprise applications user experience that are interesting to you, our customers, users, and fellow software industry professionals. Now, it's your turn. Is there something in the field of user experience that you would like to read more about? Topics could include: usability testing, user interface design and development, prototyping techniques, usability standards, or customer research. Do you have a favorite product that you would like to get an update on from a user experience point of view?

Let us know by using the Post a comment response box at the bottom of this column. Our editorial staff will survey our professional networks for authors who can provide the most accurate, comprehensive, and interesting discussions of your topics. We will respond to you through this blog or via email.

We're looking forward to knowing what's on your mind about enterprise software usability. We hope to hear from you soon.

Coming up: Don't forget to register for Oracle OpenWorld, October 11-15, 2009, at Moscone Center, San Francisco, California. For previews of user experience content at OpenWorld, see our Events column.

Dana Spradley, Principal Software Engineer
Ultan Ó Broin, Director, User Experience

As our colleague George Hackman noted in his recent blog entry Design Patterns for User Experience, Oracle has developed over 100 user interface design patterns that outline the best high-level solutions to common user interface (UI) design problems. This enables Oracle application developers to quickly and consistently put together quality UIs that make the user experience much more pleasant and productive.

At Oracle we've also begun to develop design patterns for something they've never been applied to before: online help. Buildings have a physical structure, UIs a visual and experiential one. Help topics have a structure too--the concrete way in which they present and organize ideas. They're much easier for users to understand and learn from if the structure follows a few good design principles in the first place. The writing patterns we've developed at Oracle provide high-level guidance to our technical writers on the best way to design, organize, and write each of the various kinds of help topics we've identified. Design patterns are widely used by user experience professionals (Van Duyne et al, 2006) and there are many examples available publicly (Tidwell, 2005; Yahoo! Design Pattern Library), so why not bring the technique to technical writing?

So far, we have created 16 writing patterns. They cover a variety of frequently asked questions ("Why did...?," "What happens if...?," "How can I...?," situations, and so on), conceptual information topics (such as applications architecture, information processing, decision support), examples (simple examples, conceptual examples, step-by-step case solutions), and glossary items.

The patterns are designed with the user in mind. The resulting help topics integrate with the intuitive productivity-enhancing features of the UI itself and any other user assistance (for example, messages or embedded UI help.) Writing patterns make it easier for technical writers to avoid developing overlapping, redundant, or irrelevant information, for which no patterns are provided, and concentrate instead on creating essential, well-written topics that more closely meet users' needs.

This innovative design approach means technical writers have tools at hand that go much further than traditional sources such as the Chicago Manual of Style (2003), which deals more with guidance at the level of grammar, style, and word usage than with meeting targeted business requirements for information provision. For example, our writing patterns have been developed to meet the needs of users searching for (BBC, 2008) and reading information online (Nielsen, 1997, 2006), among other requirements.

Sample Writing Pattern

As an example, let's look at the frequently asked question (FAQ) "What's the difference...?" writing pattern. It states up front that users need to understand the differences between similar or related application concepts or terms so that they can make an informed decision before making a choice on how to proceed (for example, the difference between Demand Planning and Supply Planning). The solution is to write a help topic using this pattern.

The pattern details how to compose a help topic meet the users' need for information, through a series of steps illustrated by the following rough diagram of the topic's structure:

Figure 1. Pattern diagram showing the structure of a "What's the difference...?" FAQ help topic.

The topic structure (figure 1) starts with a title (the userQuestion part) that uses a suggested phrasing for the question being asked ("What's the difference between and ?"). A mainDifference section that explains the first term in a point paragraph, and the second term in a counterpoint paragraph, answering the question, follows. If there are more distinctions to be made between the terms, then the pattern provides for an otherDifference section, allowing the writer to make other points and counterpoints. If the terms are actually synonyms, then a noDifference section can be used instead.

As in the case of Oracle's UI design patterns, the key components of Christopher Alexander's (1977) original architectural patterns (problem, context, and solution) also ring true for help topic writing patterns. Technical writers need to know the users' roles and how they actually work with the software to pick the best writing pattern for the job. And as in the case of UI design patterns, we've provided writers with a decision support tool to aid them in choosing just the right writing pattern, and review a cross-section of each writer's work to provide feedback about the pattern they've chosen and why, informing pattern development or training needs.

From Pattern to Schema

Each writing pattern is developed until it encapsulates our current best hypothesis about the optimal way to structure a help topic to solve a particular usability problem. We then translate that structure into a Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) XML schema that, integrated into our XML authoring tool, directly prompts the technical writer to use specific content-based elements at each stage of the composition process. This maximizes writer productivity and further ensures consistent results. Each schema is, technically, our own specialization of an existing DITA schema, allowing much of the HTML output processing already developed generically to automatically apply to our pattern.

The real advantages of the writing pattern approach are for the users of our documentation: a consistent user experience, easier learning, faster transfer of information, and an ease of use of topics accessed through search and read online.

We'll take a look at some more writing patterns and discuss their validation through testing in future postings on usableapps. For now, we welcome your comments below.

References:

• Alexander C. 1977. A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (Center for Environmental Structure Series). Oxford.


• BBC News 2008. Web users getting more ruthless. Online. Available from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7417496.stm [Retrieved 16-July-2009]


• Nielsen J. 1997. How Users Read On the Web. Online Available from http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html [Retrieved 16-July-2009]


• Nielsen J. 2006. F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html [Retrieved 16-July-2009]


• The Chicago Manual of Style. 2003. University of Chicago Press


• Van Duyne D K, Landay J A, Hong J I. 2006. The Design of Sites: Patterns for Creating Winning Web Sites. Prentice Hall.


• Tidwell, J. 2005 Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design. O'Reilly.

Editor' note: Dr. Sherry Mead is a cognitive psychologist with expertise in the user experience of search features and functions. This blog is the second of a two-part series on the latest in user interface design for search functionality.

Sherry Mead, User Experience Architect

Identifying and Implementing Facets

In Part 1 of this blog post, I explained how facets can be a very useful feature to enterprise users for the search function. In this part, I will describe how to identify and implement the facets. Fortunately, structured data in databases is already "tagged" with facet values because attributes with the following characteristics are good candidates for use as facets:

• Important to users: Attributes that users frequently search or filter on make good facet candidates. Examples might include Status, County, or Quarter. Collect use cases and user data in order to identify important attributes.


• Discrete values: Attributes with categorical or ordinal (numbered or countable) value sets make good facet candidates. Continuous value sets must be transformed into discrete values before using them as facets. For example, you can group dates into Months, Quarters, and Years. You can group values of numeric attributes into ranges of values, such as Amount < 100, 101 - 500, 501 - 1000, and so on. Provide names for the ranges, such as Small, Medium, and Large, if doing so is beneficial to users.


• Small(ish) number of values: Users must be able to select facet values by browsing the list. Requiring users to search the list of facet values in order to narrow their search results decreases the usability benefits of facets. Consider only attributes with a limited number of values or values that can be placed in a limited number of usable groups for use as facets.

Much value can be added to enterprise search applications by enabling users to browse unstructured data, such as e-mails, full-text files, and Web pages, using facets. The challenge is to add structure to the unstructured data. Requiring users to manually tag documents with predefined facet values (a controlled vocabulary based on business objects and their attributes) would be laborious as well as error-prone. Using optional, freely assigned tags as facets is powerful and useful, but can produce idiosyncratic and inconsistent results.

Named Entity Recognition (NER) systems represent another possible option for adding structure to unstructured data. An automated system would dramatically reduce user effort and allow more consistent application of a predefined or discovered set of tags. Clustering algorithms generate tags on-the-fly. However, it would be advantageous to use the structure that already exists in enterprise application databases to surface relationships among structured and unstructured data in both the search interface and the enterprise application interface.

Users will inevitably add information to data that does not exist in structured data sources so that a combination of free tagging, clustering, and the addition of predefined structure is likely to produce the best results.

Flat or Hierarchical Facets

A defining characteristic of facets is that they are independent of one another. However, designers have at least two options when presenting hierarchical facets to users. They can surface the hierarchy via tree or drill-down interfaces, or they can present different levels of a single hierarchy as if they were separate facets. Hearst (2006) has studied the latter presentation and determined that is it usable when the semantic (meaning) relationship among the hierarchy levels is clear to users.

If enterprise application users are familiar with business intelligence dimensions, tree or drill-down facets might be more appropriate. Business Intelligence (BI) dimensions allow users to view data by categories, such as Geography, Time, and Product. BI dimensions and facets have a lot in common. Facets and dimensions must be independent. Their value sets comprise discrete values or ranges. They can be flat or hierarchical, and both types of entities are used to select and filter data. They differ in that dimensions are used to aggregate numeric data, while facets are used to select characteristics of documents or objects.

Conclusion

In summary, faceted search uses concepts that business users are likely to be familiar with in support of an easy- and pleasant-to-use search and browse interface. Faceted search has numerous advantages over keyword-only and advanced fielded search user interfaces. Further, structured data in database records and business intelligence dimensions give enterprise search application developers an advantage in designing and implementing facets.

Jeremy Ashley, Vice President, Applications User Experience
with Misha Vaughan, Architect, Applications User Experience

I managed to leave a rainy San Francisco only to get wetter in the humidity of Orlando, Florida. The conference was spread out across the exceptionally large Orange County Conference Center. This year the Applications User Experience team was running a number of presentations:

• User Experience Innovations, Jeremy Ashley & Patanjali Venkatacharya


• The Future of Enterprise is with the Mobile Workforce, Lynn Rampoldi –Hnilo


• How the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne User Interface Continues to Evolve, Madhuri Kolhatkar


• Oracle Applications Usability Testing, Velynda Prakhantree

We also had an eye-tracking system set up in the demogrounds on the main exhibit hall to measure the usability of two Web sites for customers: usableapps.oracle.com and oracle.com. Our new Tobii system allowed users to walk up and get calibrated for eye-tracking in just a few seconds.

Fig 1. Michal Kopec and Joyce Ohgi demonstrate Tobii eyetracker at COLLABORATE09, Orlando, Florida, May 2009.

Our walk-up users responded to the uncanny way their eyeballs were represented on the screen -- you see these two animated white dots peering at you. Once they got beyond that, we managed to gather some great data on how users search for information on content-based Web pages.

One thing I always enjoy doing at these conferences is walking around the exhibition hall floor when few other people are there first thing in the morning. I chatted with several consulting organizations on the COLLABORATE09 exhibit hall floor. I talked to them about their end users and feedback they have received on user experiences of Oracle Applications.

The feedback fell into three different categories that can be described as a pyramid of issues (Fig 2).

1. Widget-level issues were at the bottom of the pyramid and the biggest issue. This kind of issue is a specific concern about a particular feature on a page. An example is the need for “row-level validation on tables” from JD Edwards. I would guess that more people have their individual wish-list items that were at a component level. The majority of feedback fell into this category.

2. The training time needed for some of the products ranks as the second biggest issue. Customers were looking for ways to get their end users up-to-speed faster. This is especially challenging when trying to deliver training to end users across the current suite of applications.

3. Consumer-level user experience was the third category of feedback, and the smallest. In general, customers would ask, “Why isn’t it as easy as some of the other things I use?” For example, “Why doesn’t search work like Google?” Another request is for a purchasing experience similar to Amazon.

Fig 2. The pyramid of user experience issues.

Attending COLLABORATE is always a fascinating experience, because we get to see a broad section of our users all in one place, rather than the individual sessions we run in a usability lab. You get a much better feeling of how the wind is blowing for customers.

As always at COLLABORATE, we experienced a vibrant user community who is very enthusiastic about our products and equally enthusiastic about giving their feedback.

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:

• Introducing new learning aids


• Making the design consistent across all of the applications


• Reorganizing controls and visual elements to make navigation easier

“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.”

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.

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.

Agile 9.3’s new inline table editing feature reduces the steps a user takes to change the contents of the table.

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.

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.

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.

Editor's note: Dr. Sherry Mead is an expert in the user experience of search. This blog is the first of a two-part series on the latest user interface design for search functionality.

Sherry Mead, User Experience Architect

What Are Facets?

From Wikipedia: "A faceted classification system allows the assignment of multiple classifications to an object, enabling the classifications to be ordered in multiple ways, rather than in a single, pre-determined, taxonomic order. Each facet typically corresponds to the possible values of a property common to a set of digital objects."

Facets are orthogonal categories or attributes used to filter a body of data. For example, shoes have type, heel height, color, and size attributes. Most shoppers are interested only in shoes of a certain size or color. A vendor may create a color facet with values such as black, brown, and red, and then enable users to filter the list of shoes to show only those having the desired value of color, such as black. Facets may also have dependencies. For example, shoes of type "athletic" do not have a heel-height facet.

The Flamenco Fine Arts Search is an example of a well-designed, faceted search user interface.

Are Facets Good for Business Users?

Facets have been popularized primarily by Internet retail sites. This post is about using facets to browse enterprise application data and other enterprise data sources, such as file servers and intranet sites.

Are Facets Good for Business Users?

Drupal.org lists a set of cases for which faceted search is likely to be appropriate:

• Users need to filter content using multiple taxonomy terms at the same time.


• Users want to combine text searches, taxonomy term filtering, and other search criteria.


• Users don't know precisely what they can find on your site, or what to search for.


• You want to hint at related content users might not have thought of looking for, but that could be of interest to them.


• You want to clearly show users what subject areas are the most comprehensive on your site.


• You are trying to discover relationships or trends between contents.


• Your site has too much content for it to be displayed through fixed navigational structures, but you still want it to be navigable.


• You want to use a faceted classification because a single taxonomic order or a single folksonomy is not suitable or sufficient for your content.


• Users often get empty result sets when searching your site.


• You think that "advanced" search forms are not fun to use.

All of the above are generally relevant to searching enterprise applications. Even enterprise users who are accustomed to advanced search forms, often with multiple required fields, tend to enter only one keyword in enterprise search UI's. Facets allow them to specify very narrow search criteria to find the individual business objects that they are accustomed to working with.

Users, especially self-service users and new employees, are often not aware of everything available to them via the enterprise application suite. Facets can provide a wealth of information about the content available within the application suite and within other information sources in the enterprise, such as file servers and intranet sites.

It is well known that enterprise applications are at once very complex and very specific. Ask anyone who has tried to design an information architecture for an enterprise application suite. If you talk to users, they will tell you about the many times they have searched for enterprise application data and gotten no results.

Finally, facets can replace advanced search forms with a more pleasant, easy-to-use interface.

In Part 2, I will explain how to design and implement search user interfaces with facets.

Kathy Miedema, Oracle Applications User Experience

Oracle’s Worklist features are being enhanced for the next generation of business enterprise software.

A Worklist describes tasks that require a manager or other employee to intervene and complete, says Carmen D’Arlach, a design architect for Oracle’s Analytics User Experience. A Worklist helps customers organize and route their tasks to the appropriate person within an organization, and tracks where tasks are as they move through a chain of participants. Customers most likely will use a Worklist to route approvals for documents such as expense reports or purchase requisitions. For example, based on who creates the expense report and how much it is for, the report might be routed to an employee in payroll for approval, and later to the company’s bank. The Worklist feature can take automatic action if the approval is not made in a timely fashion; for example, if the appropriate manager is traveling and has delegated the task to someone else.

Worklists were the subject of several usability tests during the iterative user interface design process, and the results informed multiple versions of its design. In upcoming generations of enterprise software, the Worklist may provide a notification for any business action, using any channel of communication, such as e-mail, SMS or fax. D’Arlach said most customers designate e-mail to receive notifications about tasks. Worklists will also enable customers to take action on tasks through e-mail. Approve/reject buttons will be provided to help manage information about each task, and the online version of the task will always be accessible through e-mail in case a more complex action is needed. Using Worklists in this way allows customers to spend less time navigating between documents and other applications.

The Worklist will also be available as a desktop widget in the next generation of enterprise software. The widget, a small screen that pops up on a customer’s desktop, provides fast access to prioritized tasks that may need immediate attention. Based on workflows and routing rules, the Worklist can show managers what tasks are assigned to whom in the chain of command, and where they are in the process, D’Arlach said.

The straightforward presentation of tasks in the Worklist allows users to make decisions quickly when approving expenses, vacations, or hiring; when reviewing documents or proposals; and when managing tasks with updates, attaching documents or rerouting work to another employee.

This screenshot offers a look at the full list page of the Worklist in E-Business Suite, which is the basis for the Worklist in upcoming generations of Oracle enterprise software. At a glance, users can see their list of tasks, when the task was sent, when it is due, and the current status of the task. Click here to view image detail

Anna Wichansky, Senior Director, Applications User Experience and Chair, Oracle Usability Advisory Board

On March 30-31, 2009, we celebrated the first anniversary of founding the Oracle Usability Advisory Board by having a strategic meeting in the Oracle Conference Center in Redwood Shores. One year of active participation by our very best customers yielded many examples of sharing and trust at the behest of improving user experiences. Oracle provided information and strategy for future enterprise software technology and products, including:

• collaboration software

• business intelligence

• next generation applications

• applications integration

• service oriented architectures

• business process development tools

• accessibility

Customers brought their issues lists on current application offerings, including PeopleSoft and E-Business Suite platforms. It was time to discuss the question for which we founded the board: what is the next level of enterprise software usability?

Board members had a prework assignment to discuss this very question with their organizational colleagues and to come prepared to have an active session in their working groups. Here is some of what they said:

• The next level of enterprise software should provide a consumer-level user   experience. Customers wanted software that was similar to Amazon and   Google in user experience style and complexity.

• It should have a collaborative workspace, to take advantage of the wisdom of   the Internet community. Customers believe there is significant value in   accessing “group-think”, within and possibly beyond their organizations.

• Work processes should be configurable by non-technical users. There is
  significant interest in business process modeling tools which could be
  used by subject matter experts.

• It should provide dynamic dashboards rather than just static reports. While   some customers felt there was a large cultural investment in static reports,   others said the next generation software would no longer emphasize printed   reports.

• It should provide real-time data. Customers were not satisfied seeing Web   sites with data “as of 46 minutes ago.”

• It should solve the pain of upgrades. Customers debated the costs and   benefits of Software as a Service (SaaS). While all users automatically get   upgrades and improvements at the same time in this model, it can also   blow away customizations and cause training headaches.

• The help system should be highly contextual. They wanted enhancements   such as user-added content and User Productivity Kit (UPK) videos.

• It should be usable with no training at all, or with a significant reduction in   training from today’s offerings. Some customers said this about current   professional enterprise applications, such as financials. Training should be   more about domain-level tasks, and less about the software itself.

One outcome of this exercise is consistent with my past research: when we ask customers what the next generation of products should look like, they typically describe the last generation of products we designed. I used to believe this was because customers were just reflecting what they had in their hands today. However, our customers are pretty savvy, and I think there is more to it than that. We may have designed something into the product that could not be built, based on resources, schedule, or technology limitations. Or, we may have put in a feature that performs that function, but the customer just did not “get it” in the last rendition. Maybe their implementation was not configured to take advantage of that feature. Or, it may have appeared after the system was purchased as an upgrade or enhancement that the customer was not aware of.

It is clear that we in the enterprise software business have our work cut out for us. Customers are better informed and more knowledgeable about the user experience than ever before. If enterprise software companies think they are satisfying their customers with the features of current product offerings, customers may have a different perception. In all user interface work, the devil is in the details. If the design or implementation obscures a functional solution to a customer problem, the customer may not perceive that a solution is really in there at all.

For more information on how to become an Oracle Usability Advisory Board member, click here.

Kathy Miedema, Oracle Applications User Experience

The redesigned Remote Data Capture 4.5.3 application, for Oracle’s customers in the pharmaceutical world, is already making clinical trials easier for investigators around the globe. That’s because key customers, stakeholders in pharmaceutical companies, had a hand in deciding just how the new application would work best.

The software is used by investigators, often physicians, who collect data on patients in pharmaceutical clinical trials as they test new drugs. Earlier generations of the application were slow and could be difficult to use. They required plug-in applications for PDFs, which take time to launch. Investigators who might need to travel between a hospital and a clinic, for example, found earlier generations of the application cumbersome, and they needed to be able to access patient data more easily.

“We worked with the usability team and the customers to take a step back and get a fresh perspective on the whole business process around investigators entering data about subjects for a clinical trial,” said Greg Jones, Vice President of Applications Development in Oracle’s Health Sciences Global Business Unit (HSGBU). “By taking that step, and taking the business process focus, we were able to design and develop a much improved data experience for the investigator. This is a tool that they can really use.”

“The presentation of the data on the screen needs to be very straightforward and intuitive in clinical trials,” said Michele Becci, the Senior Director of Global Strategic Accounts in HSGBU. So making usability the No. 1 issue, she said, and focusing on productivity, ease of use and efficiency, helped steer the redesign in the right direction.

Image 1. The newly redesigned Remote Data Capture 4.5.3, which is used in clinical trials by pharmaceutical companies, allows physicians conducting the trials to manipulate data more easily. Previous generations of the application used a slow-moving PDF that required a plug-in application. The new version of RDC features small menus easily accessible by right-clicking on the mouse, such as the one in the top left above. Physicians can also call up data by specific categories, such as Year Diagnosed, as shown in the menu on the right. Click here to view image detail

Members of the user experience (UX) team conducted several tests on new prototypes as the months-long redesign took place, which allowed Oracle’s teams to fine-tune the application and ensure that RDC 4.5.3 went beyond a simple new icon or two. The results were that the application’s look and feel improved, and the application became easier to use, Becci said. Very little training is needed to use RDC 4.5.3, and the overall satisfaction with the application has certainly improved. “It’s been very, very well received by customers,” she said.

One of the most important solutions to come out of the redesign was dropping the need for the plug-in application. Older generations of RDC had a poor work flow, and entering a patient’s data was not integrated well with other parts of the application, according to Kailash Dattkaya, an interaction designer and manager who worked on the redesign of RDC. Eliminating the need for a plug-in went a long way in boosting the speed of RDC, improving the ease-of-use and increasing productivity for users.

Investigators and auditors, who review the work of the trial investigators, are now able to interact with RDC 4.5.3’s data entry programs, even expanding what they can view with drill-down pages or calling up specific data columns for a side-by-side comparison, instead of toggling back and forth or opening up multiple screens. Key actions on the tool bar are easier to reach, terminology has been changed so that users have a clearer picture of what they need to do to accomplish their tasks, and the task flow of the application has been redesigned.

“RDC is optimized for investigators – that was our challenge, to make sure we delivered a great product so that pharmaceutical organizations could offer a great tool for investigators to use in their studies,” Jones said. “We were able to design and develop a better data collection experience for the investigator, an application or tool that the investigators could really use.”

“It was clear that customers were very happy with the solutions that we built,” said Madhuri Kolhatkar, Director of Oracle’s Applications Unlimited User Experience team. “We showed the health sciences sector that a good user experience can really make a difference to the product. “

Laurie Pattison, Senior Director, User Experience, Oracle

In my travels and conversations with other UX professionals, it seems that no matter what interesting design or research topic we’re discussing, there’s always a point in the conversation when the subject moves from the actual topic to how to deliver it given organizational structure or dynamics. There are a lot of talented and visionary designers and researchers out there, but not all of them have been able to achieve a seat at the strategy table of their organizations, or those for whom they contract.

It’s definitely not a new problem, nor one that hasn’t been discussed. Jim Nieters from Yahoo and I shared some of our ideas in UX Matters last year. Richard Anderson hosted a panel in 2007 with various executives asking the same question.

Is there a magic bullet to gain strategic relevance as a User Experience organization? A common question asked of successful UX leaders is what “one thing” they did to move their organizations into a position of strategic relevance. However, there are often as many answers as questions, which certainly can pose a challenge to those struggling to figure out how to achieve the same goal where they work.

At CHI 2009 in Boston, I’m joining some learned colleagues on a panel to make our case for the "one thing" we believe can make all the difference. We will also analyze a variety of scenarios from different companies in an attempt to predict the "one thing" needed in each case. We will attempt to elucidate key aspects of the scenarios and the process of analysis to help audience members “figure out how to figure out” the "one thing" that is likely to work in their own situations.

Are you trying to figure out what one thing you need to attend to in order for UX to gain a seat at the strategy table with business and engineering? If so, let us know -- tell us about your work situation, and we'll look into including it among the scenarios to be analyzed by the panelists. Alternatively, if you feel that you’ve discovered the one thing that makes all the difference, let us know by commenting on this blog. Alternatively, if you’re on Facebook, take our short survey.

Note that we'll also be addressing a mix of related questions, such as what makes a good "one thing". Can there really be only "one thing”, and just how useful can the analysis attempted during the session be. It promises to be an interesting session. We hope to see you there.

Kathy Miedema, Oracle Applications User Experience

Oracle’s User Experience team took a page from successful salespeople in creating the recent releases of the Mobile Sales Assistant (MSA) application. Speed, flexibility, and efficiency are important ingredients for making a job on the go work well. These components were also important in the creation and fine-tuning of MSA, according to team members who worked on the sales application for the BlackBerry and the iPhone.

“When you consider the new technologies coming into the marketplace, like the iPhone, the ability of Oracle’s teams to develop applications for them has to be nimble and fast,” said Madhuri Kolhatkar, Director of Oracle’s Applications Unlimited User Experience team. “So when we introduce something new, it has to be usable.” That means seeking input from users from the beginning of the application’s design process, and gathering their feedback in a systematic way. For example, some users said they’d like to see a mini calendar pop up when scheduling an appointment—a common feature used by travelers when booking a flight online or reserving a hotel room, according to Erika Webb, a User Experience Manager who was involved in the production of MSA.

Image 1. In the screenshot above from the Mobile Sales Assistant application, a calendar opens up as the user checks appointments, showing the user at a glance how the day’s appointments are set.

“We tried to make it very simple,” said Dhayan Kumar, a Senior Interaction Designer who worked on MSA. Exposing the design to real-world users, and adjusting the design as users offered their feedback, was critical. “Where there was a new feature or a new requirement, that’s where customer feedback really helped,” he said. “We talked a lot with users about the nice-to-have things,” such as the ability to take notes on a handheld device or access customer data on demand. These features were included in the finished product.

Image 2. This image shows how MSA’s list of appointments would look on an iPhone screen. Users have easy access to contacts and accounts, and the ability to see recent and frequently- viewed items is one click away.

Hody Crouch, product manager for MSA, said a highlight of developing the application was “working on something where the user was so central in all of the decisions we were making.” Users recruited for the research came back week after week to an evolving design that incorporated their feedback. The Oracle team’s approach gave designers and user experience professionals the ability to look more deeply at the design, which had unique challenges. Not only did the application need to be adapted for the small, mobile device screen, but the goal was to provide a subset of what users need on a daily basis from their desktop, Crouch said. So the Oracle team needed to collect feedback on everything from what icons should look like to whether the messaging functions worked the way users would expect them to work.

The research was gathered during intense feedback sessions in the laboratory and remotely, using software to share images online. The work took place in July and August 2008, so that the application could be unveiled at Oracle’s OpenWorld 2008 in September. A total of four users were involved in the intense iterative participatory design cycle. The team members working on the application were in several different time zones, allowing work to continue around the clock.

Image 3. This image shows how Oracle teams from around the world collaborated on the Mobile Sales Assistant application.

Kolhatkar said the MSA applications have to be developed fast, “and the user experience has to be really great – that is why we apply an agile or rapid development process and fine-tune the apps to the user’s needs.”

For more information about the Mobile Sales Assistant application and how it can work on your BlackBerry or iPhone, listen to Hody Crouch’s presentation at http://www.slideshare.net/rdonohue/oracle-mobile-sales-assistant-at-work-slideshare-presentation.