Leading newspapers are making  effective use of visualization today. As an  example,  the US treasury bond ownership graphic is far more impactful than a simple listing.

It goes deeper than just a nice graph though, at a recent lecture at Leeds Trinity College,  Guardian Data Blog editor Simon Rogers presented with Tim Berners-Lee about data journalism.

Data journalism involves visualising or scrutinising often complex amounts of statistical information.

TBL had this to say.

"Journalists need to be data-savvy. It used to be that you would get stories by chatting to people in bars, and it still might be that you’ll do it that way some times.

"But now it’s also going to be about poring over data and equipping yourself with the tools to analyse it and picking out what’s interesting. And keeping it in perspective, helping people out by really seeing where it all fits together, and what’s going on in the country."

It seems to me that most professions could do with a solid dose of data visualization and the accompanying scrutiny. I’m not talking here about expensive tools, but about the love of data, and the joy of finding stuff out, getting stuck into the numbers.

I’ve given a couple of lectures on HR topics, and I’ve been hammering home on the analytics topic, but I think next time, I’ll bring some more data visualization to the party. I strongly believe that we need to see more focus on data visualization across all areas of business, but the HR department needs serious help.

I was pleased to read that Google came up with its 8 rules of management.  At first sight they  seem a typical list that one would find in any airport management book, but they are rooted in an empirical study.  Google has built its business on analysing data, so it is  not surprising that they decided to root around in their own HR data.   I do wish more HR departments would fall in love with data.

I think it is possible to be “people-centric” and “data driven” at the same time. Using numbers  to inform decisions and drive buy in isn’t treasonable.

It has given Steve Jobs a sales force that he didn’t know he had. It seems without really planning for it, the iPad has become the must have enterprise device.

But what I’ve not yet seen is the must have enterprise application on the iPad. Yes, I’ve seen some neat repurposed reports and simple entry screens  but I’ve not yet seen an application that makes me sit up and say wow, that is a new and fundamentally better process enabled by the device.  So far the innovation is all about Apple.

If the iPad  means that enterprise software companies build executive dashboards and actually get executives engaging with the software, then fine, okay, that is an improvement from where we are today, but it misses the big opportunity.

Just  fixing the executive user experience has a whiff of the Potemkin about it. It would be a whole lot better if the iPad helped to prompt a rethink of how everyone interacts with enterprise software. Today the iPad merely illustrates the chasm between the typical enterprise software user experience and delightful design.

It works for Lance.

I’ll admit to doing yoga poses while on client phone calls. Nothing like a tree or butterfly pose to focus the mind while discussing ERP upgrades or SaaS talent management vendors.

In my ever widening search for obscure metaphors, it seems to me that enterprise applications are a bit like cyclists. Unless they get stretched regularly, they loose their suppleness. They become rigid, which eventually undermines performance.

So many ERP and HCM projects start with good intentions. The project drives change, and then you go live. Then you stop stretching.Things ossify.

Can your system still touch its toes?

• Do you have people in your organization who can help the systems flex or do you need to get in expensive SI resources to make changes?
• How easy is the product for business experts to configure?
• How can you easily test configuration changes?
• More than these though, get over the idea that going live is the end of change. It should simply be the beginning.

Some of this is about the inherent suppleness of the technology, but even the most flexible technology turns rigid if you don’t embrace continuous change.

I was thinking this morning about what impact this device could and should have on UI design. Most enterprise applications are bound by keyboard centric design thinking, basically what I call  navigation donuts. Almost every enterprise application I see is trapped in the amber of the table layouts that haven’t really fundamentally changed since the first screens appeared over 40 years ago.

Andy Bitterer commented in a recent note. (Gartner clients click here)

What would happen if Apple built a BI product? Users would probably love it and actually use it. There is hardly another company in any IT market that is considered a synonym for great design and usability. While Apple has not been known for going after the enterprise software market and rather focuses on consumer products, Apple could still easily use its visualization know-how to create an “iDecide,” “iReport” or “iAnalyze” product that was at least as attractive as those from the best-in-class vendors today. In fact, other BI vendors could learn from Apple how to build end-user-friendly and intuitive applications.

For all the talk from enterprise application vendors about user centric design and building engaging applications, the enterprise software world could really do with an Apple moment.

Many of the applications I see would not be out of place in Miss Havisham’s Mansion. The Enterprise UI design clocks stopped some time ago, and the usability wedding cake continues to rot.

So unchanging was the dull old house, the yellow light in the darkened room, the faded spectre in the chair by the dressing-table glass, that I felt as if the stopping of the clocks had stopped Time in that mysterious place, and while I and everything else outside it grew older, it stood still….It bewildered me, and under its influence I continued at heart to hate my trade and to be ashamed of home.

image from http://chantalpowell.wordpress.com/2008/07/31/miss-havishams-table/  a fascinating blog.

“I began to understand that everything in the room had stopped like the watch and the clock, a long time ago.” “Everything within my view which ought to be white had been white a long time ago, and had lost its lustre, and was faded and yellow.”

Many of us work from home, and several have multi-monitor set ups. This is Mark’s set up.

Here is mine. I’m feeling a tad inadequate. A mere 22"wide screen monitor and my T61 notebook screen.

Depending on what I’m doing I often split the display across the two monitors. For instance, I may have Powerpoint on one and mail on the other.

If you head over to the developer blogs it is clear that dual monitors and bigger monitors are much loved , as Jeff Attwood noted back in 2004.  And Joel Spolsky says,

Debugging GUI code with a single monitor system is painful if not impossible. If you’re writing GUI code, two monitors will make things much easier.

and

Top notch development teams don’t torture their programmers. Even minor frustrations caused by using underpowered tools add up, making programmers grumpy and unhappy. And a grumpy programmer is an unproductive programmer.

To add to all this… programmers are easily bribed by giving them the coolest, latest stuff. This is a far cheaper way to get them to work for you than actually paying competitive salaries!

Joel’s post on office layout and developer workspace is well worth reading. I’m not an expert in this stuff, but buying people that sit in chairs and stare at screens all day the best screens and chairs instinctively makes sense, but I’ll leave the more detailed assessment of the ROI thereof to my colleagues in the high performance workplace research group. Joel notes.

Desks designed for programming. Long, straight desks include a motorized height-adjustable work surface for maximal ergonomics and comfort, and so you can stand up for part of the day if you want. Standard 30” monitors. Desks are straight instead of L-shaped to make pair programming and code reviews more comfortable. There are 20 electrical outlets behind every desk and most developers have small hubs for extra computers. Our standard-issue chair is the Herman Miller Aeron. Those guest chairs are the famous Series 7 by Arne Jacobson. The pedestal storage is on wheels and incorporates a cushion-top for additional guest seating.

It certainly looks great. (photo and quote from the Joel on Software blog.

My request

I have one caveat for developers and designers with big screens and ergonomic chairs that I’d like to raise here though.

When designing UIs for enterprise application users, don’t just do that on your fancy 360 degree swivel megacool gigahertzoid multipixel frequency self modulating flat screen 30” flicker-glare free hydromatic systematic automatic greased lightning monitor.

Get out that 7 year old 15" monitor, and a 13" laptop. See how your design works there.

All of you that have inputted travel expenses or leave forms on a laptop are nodding now.

Hands up if constantly scrolling down to find the currency field and the save button is user centric design.

Just because you, lucky developer have 30 inches of screen real estate, doesn’t mean those that use your application do.

(from the cc flickr pics of Robyn, thanks!)

At the Tokyo Auto Show, Nissan honcho Carlos Ghosn unveiled the GT-R. The car, which hits the US next Spring, features a multifunction dash display that was developed in conjunction with Gran Turismo Polyphony Digital. The display can monitor oil pressure, oil temp, engine coolant temp, transmission oil pressure, turbocharger boost pressure, throttle position, torque split, steering angle and lateral G-force. The Polyphony Digital display can also log data that helps improve driving technique and can help with fuel economy. (Thanks to Brian for the image and the text)

There some other video over on the Gizmodo site.

A car dashboard has many constraints and demands. It needs to inform, warn, and often entertain, but not distract. It needs to work well with peripheral vision. A badly designed dashboard can kill people.

A couple of things impressed me about what Nissan has done.

1. Looking to non-traditional sources for design innovation.

2. Virtual world designs impacting real world product.

3. Real and virtual world symbiosis. (A win win for Nissan and Polyphony)

4. Persona driven design. With the GT-R Nissan and Polyphony knew exactly what sort of user they are building the car for. Not just someone who drives a car, but a particular persona.

 Enterprise software and the Wii.

This got me thinking about enterprise software. Perhaps it is high time we let the folks who design compelling user experiences in the gaming world loose on the enterprise application user experience. I’ve written about experiments such as Wii-hands before, but I’m not aware of anything like what Nissan have done here, bringing in gaming experts to work on a key component of a flagship product. If anyone is, I would love to know more. My wife and I recently got a Wii for our birthdays (thanks gang), and I’ve been amazed how simple it has been to configure and learn. The designers of the Wii have nailed pretty much every single core design principle.  it is a lot of fun to play, but I’m in awe of its design.

Readers of this blog will have noted that I have an interest in design thinking. A good portion of my Christmas wish list is made up of books on design, and I will continue to inflict more of my design inspired ramblings on you via this blog once I return in the new year.

It strikes me that what Mark Shuttleworth and his team are doing with the notification feature is a good example of design thinking in action. His post and the discussions that follow in the comments are rich and often very thoughtful.

This sort of information provides fantastic input for the developer.  It suggests to me that more solution/product managers should be using blogs and other social software tools to collect input into the solution design. Some vendors use blogs, but too often it is merely to announce things that are already built, or to solicit high level requests. It should be a conversation not a broadcast.

Mark is keenly aware of the trade off between constraint-driven simplicity and functionality.

The most controversial part of the proposal is the idea that notifications should not have actions associated with them. In other words, no buttons, sliders, links, or even a dismissal [x]. When a notification pops up, you won’t be able to click on it, you won’t be able to make it go away, you won’t be able to follow it to another window, or to a web page. Are you loving this freedom? Hmmm? Madness, on the face of it, but there is method in this madness.

Our hypothesis is that the existence of ANY action creates a weighty obligation to act, or to THINK ABOUT ACTING. That make notifications turn from play into work. That makes them heavy responsibilities. That makes them an interruption, not a notification. And interruptions are a bag of hurt when you have things to do.

So, we have a three-prong line of attack.

1. We want to make notifications truly ephemeral. They are there, and then they are gone, and that’s life. If you are at your desktop when a notification comes by, you will sense it, and if you want you can LOOK at it, and it will be beautiful and clear and easy to parse. If you want to ignore it, you can safely do that and it will always go away without you having to dismiss it. If you miss it, that’s OK. Notifications are only for things which you can safely ignore or miss out on. If you went out for coffee and a notification flew by, you are no worse off. They don’t pile up like email, there is no journal of the ones you missed, you can’t scroll back and see them again, and therefor you are under no obligation to do so – they can’t become work while you are already busy with something else. They are gone like a mystery girl on the bus you didn’t get on, and they enrich your life in exactly the same way!
2. We think there should be persistent panel indicators for things which you really need to know about, even if you missed the notification because you urgently wanted that coffee. So we are making a list of those things, and plan to implement them.
3. Everything else should be dealt with by having a window call for attention, while staying in the background, unless it’s critical in which case that window could come to the foreground.

Since this is clearly the work of several releases, we may have glitches and inconsistencies along the way at interim checkpoints. I hope not, but it’s not unlikely, especially in the first iteration. Also, these ideas may turn out to be poor, and we should be ready to adjust our course based on feedback once we have an implementation in the wild

Deciding what functionality to leave off is hard, yet so often it is given little attention.

I’m also impressed with Mark’s sense of responsibility for the user experience.

The Ubuntu desktop is something I take very personally; I feel personally responsible for the productivity and happiness of every Ubuntu user, so when we bring new ideas and code to the desktop I believe we should do everything we can to make sure of success first time round. We should not inflict bad ideas on our users just because we’re curious or arrogant or stubborn or proud. Despite being occasionally curious, arrogant, stubborn and proud

This is good advice for other software companies too.

It is one of the finest collection of vintage and significant cars as you will find anywhere, other than at the other Benz  museum in Stuttgart. It is my sad affliction to think about software design at the weekends, and the Benz museum provided some ideas on usability.

This is an early French  racing car. a 1921 Amilcar. 28 horsepower, 908cc motor.

This is the steering wheel of a formula one  championship  winning car. Comment below if you can tell me whose.

It would overwhelm most of us, but for the best drivers in the world, every switch is vital and a lot of thought went into its layout. It is a User interface built for one.

The problem with a lot of business application software is that it has as many buttons and switches as the example above, but most users would be better of with the Amilcar layout. Most users just want to get in and drive. It is only when you really get to know your user that you can actually design something that works for them.

I originally posted this on my personal blog, but then Matthias Zeller from Adobe twittered:

Wish I had the race car steering wheel. business apps feel more like Boeing 747 cockpits

from the telstar logisitics cc flickrstream. He has a great set of aircraft pictures.

Yes.

He then commented in more detail on the blog.

When we are talking about the Adobe Genesis project we use similar analogies. Business Applications are like Boeing 747 cockpits. However as a regular knowledge worker I just need access to a small subset of the functionality. What if you could grab the altimeter or ground speed indicator out of the cockpit and build your own custom cockpit. But you might want to create multiple of those (we call them workspace) based on project or specific context. Even better what if the business application based on your specific context can suggest a custom workspace for you which you can further customize, save and share with others.

Oh, yes and I like the pictures. Next time I visit SAP I need to stop by the museum.

For those delivering enterprise apps, understanding and using the newer technologies is important. They have the potential to make the UI more compelling and more pleasant to use. Design becomes ever more paramount. This is something that my colleague Ray Valdes stresses in his upcoming RIA/AJAX marketscope.

I recently published a case study on how Ness used a tool called Worklight to radically simply ERP time entry. (summary here, you need access for the full report.) Do you have other examples where you have radically simplified user experience? I plan to do more work on UI simplification in 2009.

From the excellent cc flickrstream of stevelyon Thanks.

I live in Ladenburg, Karl Benz’s home town, so there is probably something slightly sacrilegious posting about the fabulously awesomely brilliant new Nissan GT-R.

I read the metacool blog regularly,  he is one of the leading thinkers on design, and his blog is full of interesting thoughts on design, from cars to software.

This comment from the Chief Vehicle Engineer of the Nissan GT-R is relevant far beyond the confides of car design.

"When you’re making something of high quality, you have to polish it a certain number of times.  This is actually a number of trial and errors.  When you think about how much you can polish something in a four-year development period, you’re talking about how many times you can do trial and error and then speed becomes the defining factor.  When you all share that speed as a team, you can polish a car like never before.  It’s that simple, really."
                        – Kazutoshi Mizuno, Chief Vehicle Engineer, Nissan GT-R

The metacool blog goes on to say.

This speaks to one of the fundamental aspects of design thinking as it  relates to the process of innovation: iterate, iterate, iterate.  I often relate "business by design" to "business as usual" by using a sporting analogy:  business as usual is about efficiency and accuracy, about swimming as fast a race as one can.  And there’s a time and a place for that.  Business by design, in contrast, would be a swim race where you where rewarded based on the number of laps you could get in within a certain amount of time.  You want to do lap after lap, because with each stroke through the water, you gain the opportunity to learn something new, to try a different approach.  The sum of all those small learnings and insights — together with the occasional big leap — is what ends up being called innovative behavior.

But I like Mizuno’s notion of polishing more than I do that of laps.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  Keep trying for perfection even though you know it will never come in a full sense, but with each try some new learning emerges.

So how quickly can you polish and iterate?

We need to apply this thinking to business processes too. Polish, polish polish.  It is rare that something is perfect from the start. The software industry and its users need to get better at small but continuous improvements. Innovation requires constant effort and application, it isn’t something you do once a decade. Big ideas are made great by constant polish.

There is a refreshing lack of hubris in Nissan’s approach, they have just quietly got on with building something quite remarkable.  It is high time that the enterprise software industry learnt the power of this attention to detail. A little more modesty wouldn’t hurt either.