AboutUI

The Right User Interface for the right person

During this week’s trip to the BI/Portals Conference in Orlando, I was trying out “Vikido”. Vikido is nice application enabling kids to have their own “mailbox” containing video messages sent to them by their friends. So every morning and every evening I would sit down in front of my laptop and record a message to each kid. They would click on a shortcut on the desktop and then be greeted by the following interface:

there are still some bugs in the service and WebCam drivers are notoriously instable, but in general this service was a huge success. This got me thinking of the reactions to the Business ByDesign UI in the last SAP influencer summit. Some people loved it and thought it was the best things since sliced bread. Other people thought it was stale, boring and full of many boxes.
An additional piece clicked when Thomas Otter (a.k.a. @vendorprisey) sent me a very nice piece how some people prefer ugly user interfaces and maybe that is the key – stop trying to “harmonize” and “align” user interfaces. One size (or look and feel) certainly does not fit all.
On the other hand – if you have 15 different screens for entering a material code and all fifteen are uniquely ugly, then some harmonization is in place