User experience in the BYOD age
The wave of BYOD (Bring you own device) is one of the hottest IT challenges of 2012. Much has been written about security, policies, ownership and whether you should develop native, HTML5 or hybrid applications. But how are you going to produce successful applications for your mobile workforce?
The poor user experience of enterprise software
In order to be viable, mobile and tablet apps must be designed with the user experience in mind. The user acceptance is the key success factor for consumer apps.
But in the enterprise, ux is often seen as an expensive nice-to-have. Instead of making user-friendly apps from the start, many organisations prefer to invest in training, manuals and support.
Consequently, most enterprise apps have bloated, complicated and unattractive user interfaces.
User acceptance as primary objective
In the old world, one could force employees to use complicated bloated applications. The IT departments controlled the environment and the applications. Today it’s no longer the case. And since employees expect a high degree of experience on their devices, user satisfaction becomes a primary IT objective.
But Merely wrapping a standard business application to work on a touch screen is not enough.
A paradigm shift in the development process
To create succesful mobile apps for your business, you need to introduce User Centered Design methods: Listen to the users, understand their needs and the context of use. The developers, architects and user experience designers must learn to collaborate instead of working separately.
In the BYOD world, the user experience is no longer an afterthought. It becomes as important as the software architecture or the security. Sounds like a lot of work? Yes, but it’s worth it in the long run: Satisfaction allows your employees to be more productive. More intuitive apps help reduce the costs of training, support and human errors. This is what you strive to achieve when you write enterprise applications for the mobile and tablet.
We help you make the transition
Are you planning mobile or tablet projects for your business? Or are you considering to migrate your legacy applications for mobile devices?
We can help you transition to BYOD: evaluate your existing application portfolio, your mobile needs, plan, design and develop intuitive apps that your employees will love. Contact me for any questions about user experience and mobile application design.