Toward the Modern User Interface

The Goals of Modern UX

• Consumer-level design experience is the standard even for Enterprise B2B applications
• Delight the user, and create a memorable experience
  • Remember, intuit, and understand the user
• Automatic: serve up the tasks needed to be complete, not data
• A great user interface understands the difference between data, knowledge, wisdom, and insights
• The UX designer is primarily empathetic to their users
• Great UX seeks to identify and provide the maximum value for the target user as defined by the user
  

• UI always allows you to see what you've done or just did (recency)
  • Lists should nearly always be organized by recency (frecency
• Designate information to be saved for later – like the 'Watch later' list in YouTube
• Create meta-notes in any context
• A rich-tasking (collaboration) model that helps the UI prioritize a user’s work
• A sense of next steps (what must you do) should be the FIRST thing you see at the beginning of the day
  • Also, what you've done, where you left off, etc.
• High-value, compiled information, should always be a part of the top-level experience
  • Dashboards, visualizations, charting
• Social benchmarking should be a first-principles design center (how am I doing relative to others?)
• Long lists of actions and apps should NOT be the top-level experience
• Dynamic UI - A fully customizable/personalizable UI should be offered wherever appropriate
  • Turn on/off modules on a page and dynamically rearrange them
  • Create custom tabs or filter buttons (there is a HUGE gap between user needs and static page designs)
  • Personalize navigation (customize tabs or even the navigation order)
• Minimize navigation: Show detailed information without navigation off of the main page through progressive disclosure
• Let users move easily between different scales of data (dashboard, list, details)
• Comparison - Let users easily compare two objects side by side
• Display choice - Give users the ability to create new windows or pop out information
• Reduce navigation by as much as possible
• Content first
• Dynamic not static
• Relevant data based on context - UI should figure out what you want from implied goals/role/behavior
• The UI itself is different at different times depending on your current task
• How does the design add value? Depends on the user.
  • What is it that they want to get done? Most software barely scratches the surface when it comes to adequately reflecting users’ priorities
• Adaptive, Personalizable, Customizable
• User control over the design itself, let the user tell the UI what they want or don’t want
• Customers often want to customize a UI according to their unique business processes so there is never one solution

Modern Work Process

• Files are dead, don't use files as an information currency because they are static and new updates have to be propagated manually. Allow for exporting to files, but don't encourage it.
• Always have content be live and dynamic
• Share information in collaborative, mutually editable environments
• Save decisions, meeting summaries, and recordings in a group's online environment
• Make information accessible and retrievable, using good knowledge management principles
  • Be aware that information propagation is primary bottleneck for corporation agility
• Use SaaS tools - there are many - but in effective combinations. And be aware of their limitation: Slack is great as a messaging platform but terrible as a long term information store, yet many companies have few direct integrations to get that information out and into a Wiki format.
• Dynamic Wikis like Nuclino.com are a must that provide realtime editing in a simultaneous collaborative environment