The Road Ahead: Trends in the Oracle Applications User Experiences

By Misha Vaughan, Applications User Experience


Photograph by Martin Taylor, Oracle Applications User Experience

The Apps UX team keeps team is keeping its eyes on the horizon of new technologies that may have an impact on the enterprise space.  We take many new concepts and technologies and put them through an internal research, design, and development process to assess which ones may or may not gain traction in the enterprise space.  These areas are not limited to the ones listed below, but the ones below are starting to see some traction within Oracle..

Simplification– We have the explosion of multiple devices with smaller screens to thank for this trend. It’s a trend we can all benefit from in the enterprise space.  At Oracle, there is an analysis under way to really evaluate what the key use cases are, and where it makes sense to offer users a fast, light-touch user experience.  This might be on tablets, and this might be on smart phones. It is a space that is really evolving fast.    

Voice–Apple’s Siri has sparked a renewed interest in voice input technologies.  At first, the inner geek said, “Wow!”  Now that our hearts have stopped racing, we are taking a real look at what this implies in the enterprise applications space. It means thinking carefully about when and where business users really need this kind of capability: Do they need it on a desktop? Do they need it on a smartphone? Do they need it on a tablet?  Why?

Gamification  -- Gamification in the enterprise space is adding immersive, game-like elements to an enterprise application. I have seen some really interesting use cases for gamifying elements of enterprise applications, but I am still waiting for the “wow” in the enterprise space.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s huge in the consumer space, especially in terms of brand marketing to Gen Y and Millenials.  But I agree with technology research company Gartner and Oracle’s Erika Webb, who say it is all going to come down to the actual, meaningful design – sticking a badge on it does not equal a gamified application.

Tailoring and extending applications user experiences– Oracle has been listening to customers and partners who have taken out-of-the-box Oracle applications user experiences that were well designed and tested, and in extending them, broke the user experience.  So we have been thinking about the kinds of tools customers and partners need to tailor experiences with a light touch, as well as how to address the needs of customers and partners who want more guidance such as user experience design patterns for desktop applications or mobile devices.

You can expect to see more on this blog and on the UsableApps blog as the clouds start to part on the road ahead for applications user experiences.