INTELLIGENT SOFTWARE BUSINESS
interfaces have been developed to meet
these individual needs.
When paired with new technologies
such as AI and machine learning, the
role-based interface can also become
intelligent, predicting how you want your
personalised interface displayed and
automatically adapting what information
is shown, for example depending on the
device you use and how much is practical
to display. The future user interfaces will
be smart and evolve to learn from your
past actions and preferences.
Voice-chat user experience
Dan Matthews is Chief Technology Officer
at IFS.
Consumerisation
The consumerisation trend has been
ramping up for a couple of years now
and consists of two interconnected
developments. Mobile is the new normal:
As we use mobile phones for everything
in our personal lives, this also raises the
bar for how we expect to use enterprise
software on our phones.
A growing number of organisations
are implementing responsive designs that
adapt across platforms and screen sizes to
allow various mobile devices to interact
with business software. Mobile first
has become a common user experience
strategy for consumer software.
Although in enterprises the majority of
work is still done on laptops and desktops,
mobile has to be an equal possibility for
users. So, whereas mobile first might apply
for a number of specific business processes
within enterprise software, mobile as a
choice applies to all processes.
Personalisation
Rapidly increasing data volumes within
organisations have made it even more
urgent to personalise information and
make it available at a glance. The CEO
needs top-level financial data whereas
the service engineer may need the latest
asset status from the energy plant or
manufacturing line. Role-based user
User experience does not just have to be
visual, forms and lists. Consumer-focused
interfaces, such as Siri, Cortana and Alexa,
have accelerated the adoption of voice and
chat as an interface in the enterprise arena
as well. The benefits are clear, you can
search for data and perform tasks within
your system using voice or chat through
Skype, Messenger, or any other channel
instead of having to use a dedicated
enterprise application and click through
endless menus and structures.
This provides vital benefits for
casual users, who can interact in a more
convenient way, and for professionals
such as service engineers, who can use
their hands when repairing an asset while
searching for instructions using their voice.
In my
discussions with
customers, I see
that businesses
are increasingly
realising that
user experience
correlates
closely to user
engagement.
Mixed-reality user experience
Moving us even further beyond screen
display or voice notions of user experience
is the growing take-up of AR and VR.
Since its start ten years ago, augmented
reality has matured fast. Companies like
XMReality offer AR remote guidance,
where field service experts can help
maintenance engineers in the field
solve complex problems as if they were
physically present. Such technologies have
gone from being exploratory R&D projects
to mature solutions extraordinarily
quickly, and it will not take long before we
see broader adoption.
Another opportunity to leverage these
technologies is through mixed reality,
which combines augmented reality and
virtual reality using devices such as the
Microsoft HoloLens. Imagine service
engineers who can visualise data from the
business software directly on an asset that
is to be serviced via their safety glasses.
This will make it possible to work on
repairing the asset with both hands, while
having the service instructions right in
front of their eyes!
The intuitive, easy-to-use user
experience of mixed reality, combined
with enterprise software data, could
reshape how we think about enterprise
user experience in the future. The
technologies discussed above are in
varying states of maturity. But no matter
what technology is used, measuring the
success of software user experience will
always be key. User engagement is so
important today that it must be monitored
just like customer satisfaction or other
important KPIs.
You can do it in a number of ways,
from having the users rank features in
a usability index, track when and how
features are used, or arrange feedback
sessions with user groups. user experience
also has an impact on important business
metrics such as employee productivity and
employee satisfaction and retention.
It is important not only to assess all of
these parameters before, during and at
the end of a specific implementation, but
they should also be continual gauges of
operational success.
47