AboutUI

Do one thing and do it well

Back when I was young and still harboring some dreams and friends (real ones, not those you follow), we used to hang out almost on a daily basis at Hummus Ashkara. The thing about Hummus Ashkara is that they only do one thing (surprisngly – Hummus) and they do it exceedingly well. Unlike a lot of the other places operating at the same time they didnt have a wide variety of things on the menu. Just this one thing. Hummus. And for that – they did it amazingly.

I have the same feeling (sans the calories) everytime I take a look at Balsamiq’s Mockup tool. For those of you who haven’t heard of it, Balsamiq is an extremely simple, extremely intuitive application for creating fast mockups. By drag-and-dropping variuos UI elements (starting from big ones to the little ones) you can create amazing screens in no time.

Balsamiq know to do one thing and that is to create UI mockups. Nothing more and nothing less. There are so many software products who do UI mockups “as well”. And hence – are lacking.

Dont get me wrong – there is a value to integration into a suite of products (e.g. Microsoft Office) but this integration should be in addition to the ‘standalone’  or ‘local’ capabilities of the targeted product.

Until recently, I treated Balsamiq as a nice tool, but lacking. Yes, I was impressed by their sales numbers, And then they introduced the ability to add extensions / plugins, through this site – Mockups to Go. People using Balsamiq are contributing UI patterns. Now – the festivities can begin. I can imagine us putting some time in creating the SAP Signature Design as a Balsamiq pattern and personally – my life would become so much better. No more powerpoint / visio to try and convey my thoughts and vision for some products to all the relevant people. That is probably the hardest part of being a product manager / product definition / program manager – whatever the title is – the problem remains. Balsamiq (with the aide of some patterns) can come to the rescue.

Posted in Tools | Comments

Police 2.0

Last week a person with (undoubtedly) very bad karma entered my front yard and took my Red and Black Mongoose Rockadile LE bike. Yes, Yes, I know. It’s not such an expensive bike. I have yet to meet my 40K weekly milestone before I really make it spiffy, but it already had the baby chair adapter and the water bottle holder (sans the bottle itself). This really pissed me off. I really liked my bike and the financial burden of getting a new one is also considerable.

2006 Mongoose Rockadile AL; Complete specs

Luckily enough, the bike was insured. However, in order to get the money from the insurance company, one has to show a police report that the bike was actually stolen. Maybe this is different in other countries, but in Israel, filing a complaint for a stolen bike is a mere formality. The police force is so overloaded, undermanned and under budgeted that the chance to get a police officer investigate a 2000 NIS (500$, at current rates) bike theft is less than zero. However, one must file a complaint.

So I went to the police station. One overwrought officer (a very nice one) was in charge of all ‘community service’ which basically means – all the complaints which we are not going to do anything about. Petty thefts, neighbor disputes etc. It took me 4 hours to get to my turn. It took the guy 30 minutes to register my complaint (including typing my verbal testimony – “I came back home and found that my bike is gone”) and then 3 phone calls to the insurance company to fax them the printed complaint form. Such a waste of time. I started thinking about “Police 2.0”. Imagine an external facing portal for these petty issues. You log in, go to the online forms page (already existing!) and fill out such a complaint. Someone then goes over all the filed complaints and handles the ones which are suspicious or problematic. For the rest – you should just be able to forward the filled form to your insurance company. That should take you all in all about 5 minutes.

Of course, there is no such form. But wouldn’t it be cool?

And no, this has no relation to SAP announcing its new Law enforcement solution…

Posted in Enterprise | Comments

OMG. Upgrading to WP 2.7.1

I’ve just upgraded the blog to Wordpress 2.7.1. It took me three clicks and five minutes. And this includes backing up everything. This is how Lifecycle management should be.

Posted in Wordpress | Comments

The Danger of Platforms

I’ve been trying to get myself into a bike riding regimen for a while. Being a naturally lazy person (its the ADD!), I set myself with milestones to encourage me with my day to day operations. Otherwise, I don’t get anything done. The milestone I set a week ago was this – Until I reach 40Km of bike riding in a week, I wont buy any new bike gadgets. For there are so many wonderful bike gadgets out there…

In order for me to meet my 40Km milestone, I need to ride my bike to work. The showers at SAP close at 09:00, meaning that between dispersing the kids to their respective educational establishments to all the rest, I need to be out of bed by 06:30. Like most grown men, I use my cell-phone as my alarm clock. During all my cell-phone usage years, I have made a point to stick with Nokia only. They have the usability thing going. Alas, a year ago I was handed a Sony-Ericsson K350i. After a week in which I deleted 3 contacts, I pretty much got used to it. However, this morning, instead of being woken up at 06:30, I naturally woke up at 07:45. No biking, no coffee, quick quick quick to work. An investigative comittee was formed (my wife) and revealed the following. The phone was stuck (all night!) on the following screen:

Save before Exit?

What happend is this. I edited the time of the alarm and exited the “organizer” app. A normal assumption would have been that I wanted the alarm time changed –> save the new time and exit. What happened is that some development platform / OS (The K530i is running a Sony-Ericsson proprietary OS) had the following logic: “Object Changed, User Wanted to exist –> Ask user if he is sure”, with no regard to what the object really was. It makes perfect sense to have the “Are you sure” question on Contacts – You don’t want to accidentaly delete them, but for times on you alarm clock?

Another example for this is when you start up your K530i. Instead of just starting up, it has a question for you – “Do you want Flight Mode or Normal Mode?”. Here’s a safe bet – 99.99% of times such a phone is started you want the normal mode. For those 10 jet-setters who open up their phone during flight – they’ll manage. The number of times, on the other hand, in which I’ve opened up the phone, forgot about this question and found that I’ve been ‘off’ for several hours – that’s a class action waiting to happen.

Bottom line – Forget the platform and showing off you capabilities – Know your use-case. What do people want when they set up their alarm clocks? What do they want when they turn on their phones?

As for the bike gadgets – they’ll have to wait until next week.

Posted in Enterprise | Comments

In 30 years

Amazing photo gallery by Patrick Borland, of decayed machines in the Cokatoo Islands shipyard(?) should give you a perspective of how whatever you are doing now will look in 30 years. Will it even have an aesthetic value by then?

Posted in General | Comments

The Future of Sticky Notes

This one is really cool. For a long while I’ve been convinced that enterprise software is the main driver of 3M’s profits. If only there was a way to embed all these sticky notes into our ERPs, CRMs, etc.

The interesting question here is – why do our users need so much sticky notes? The answer (again) would be that we (not SAP, the Enterprise Vendors in general) don’t give them good enough options to capture all the sticky note contents into their day to day business processes.

Posted in Enterprise | Comments

Modern HR Consultants

This one below is so true, its not even funny anymore.

Posted in Enterprise | Comments

What Enterprise Software should learn from Wordpress 2.7

Last week we saw the release of version 2.7 of the popular blogging platform Wordpress (which is powering this blog as well). Many has been said and written about the new release (see some links below) and I think that Robert Scoble was the most eloquent by simply saying: “It Rocks“. I tried to take a look at the new system through my day job glasses – i.e. What Enterprise Software should learn from Wordpress in General and from its 2.7 version in particular. Top three things are these:

1. Lifecycle Management
2. UI Flexibility
3. Listen to your users

Trivial? Hah.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Enterprise, Wordpress | Comments

Upgraded to 2.7

Just used Dreamhost’s excellent 1-click installer to upgrade the blog to Wordpress 2.7. Everytime I use Wordpress’s admin interface I am really amazed at how super usable this thing is. More to come as I actually formulate what I have to say about it.
This, for instance, has been written using the new “QuickPress” box. Sheer Genius.

Posted in Admin | Comments

Global Mobility

The recent recruitment of John Wookey from Oracle to SAP has got me thinking how all these big companies are one little bunch which mostly does inbreeding in between themselves (SAP was founded by IBM engineers). Who else but LinkedIn to confirm my suspicions:

(Notice the “Career Path” section)

Posted in Fun, SAP | Comments