Personalisation and differentiation is a big umbrella, it addresses the fact that there is no single user, there are many different users with different skill levels and there are various ways they like to work. In essence business application designers work under similar constraints to consumer product designers, designing standard items for a mass market, each member of which sees themself as an individual.
This means you have to build a standard item which can accommodate the needs and wants of a range of people. These are the prime areas you need to consider in your internal business applications:
1. Role based personalisation. Varying application access and information presentation depending on the user roles.
2. Skill based personalisation. Allowing for different skills and experience. The user community is a broad thing; it covers the newbie, regular users and power users. The same applications need to accommodate all of these. We need to make the application intuitive, obvious and helpful to the newbie while giving the power user fast track methods like navigation and keyboard shortcuts. Meet these needs and the regular users are satisfied as well.
3. Working practice personalisation. For example: some users will only want to work in a single window; some user will use multiple browser tabs; some users will want to use multiple windows and some users will want to use combinations of these. Again, some people like to work with on screen reports, some people will insist on printed reports, so they must get options. You may be able to allow your users to customise their own home page with useful productivity widgets. There’s a lot of little things you can design in which helps people customise their workspace.
In summary, there are three prime types of personalisation to consider in business applications: role based personalisation, skill based personalisation and working practice personalisation. Get this right, as far as you can, and you’ll make better business applications with happier users.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Monday, September 29, 2008
Accessibility, disability and your business IT
In the beginning…
One area which is of great interest to me, and which I know confuses and worries many people is accessibility which also involves disability.
What gives me the right to talk about accessibility?
I have a teenage son with learning and physical difficulties. I’ve worked with and designed and developed software for many people with a wide range of abilities and disabilities. It has made me realise how badly people do accessibility, mainly because they don’t understand the needs and the problems sufficiently well. My designs always accommodate accessibility appropriately; it makes for better applications for all users.
What is accessibility and is it important?
In the UK we are governed by the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), so we have a legal framework to operate in and legal obligations to consider. Other territories may or may not have accessibility laws. Whether or not you have laws to guide you, it is your moral obligation to consider the needs of a large part of our community. It’s also pretty stupid to make it impossible for capable people to work for you because you didn’t try.
Why do you need to consider accessibility?
Making applications accessible isn’t just a morally good thing to do; it may be a legal necessity. If an application is developed which unreasonably makes it impossible for someone to do a job they are otherwise capable of doing, then they may be able to take you to law. An employer has a duty under the DDA to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ to ensure that a disabled employee is not put at a substantial disadvantage. These obligations are expressed in terms of ‘reasonableness’ so there is room for common sense in how these obligations are met.
One area which is of great interest to me, and which I know confuses and worries many people is accessibility which also involves disability.
What gives me the right to talk about accessibility?
I have a teenage son with learning and physical difficulties. I’ve worked with and designed and developed software for many people with a wide range of abilities and disabilities. It has made me realise how badly people do accessibility, mainly because they don’t understand the needs and the problems sufficiently well. My designs always accommodate accessibility appropriately; it makes for better applications for all users.
What is accessibility and is it important?
In the UK we are governed by the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), so we have a legal framework to operate in and legal obligations to consider. Other territories may or may not have accessibility laws. Whether or not you have laws to guide you, it is your moral obligation to consider the needs of a large part of our community. It’s also pretty stupid to make it impossible for capable people to work for you because you didn’t try.
Why do you need to consider accessibility?
Making applications accessible isn’t just a morally good thing to do; it may be a legal necessity. If an application is developed which unreasonably makes it impossible for someone to do a job they are otherwise capable of doing, then they may be able to take you to law. An employer has a duty under the DDA to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ to ensure that a disabled employee is not put at a substantial disadvantage. These obligations are expressed in terms of ‘reasonableness’ so there is room for common sense in how these obligations are met.
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