All About the Uses, Less About the User?

0545. London. It's starting to get cold, and my alarm is shrieking insistently at me to wake up. I try to melt it with the power of my not-insignificant glare, but to no avail. One hand snakes out from under the covers, trying to figure out how to stop this noise from turning a headache into a migraine, before I remember that I changed phone from iOS to Android a few days ago, and the screen is therefore incomprehensible. Instead, I resort to hitting it, and a sullen, mutinous beep marks that I've inadvertently managed to put it into snooze. But it'll be back.

It always is.

The point of this isn't to demonstrate my lack of technical sophistication, although anyone who's ever seen me try to put up a cabinet will attest to that, but that user experience and ease-of-use are important when it comes to technology. Apple's practically built a corporate empire around that simple notion, after all.

This morning, I moderated a webcast on analytics tools and technologies, in which this very question came up. After all, you can have these giant data deathplants, taking in streams of information and churning out results, but in what form? Do they come in pretty visualizations that may look good on a Power Point presentation, or are they rendered in such a way that anyone without a PhD in rocket science may as well pack up and go home now?

The answer, as always, seems to be a mix. Some constituents in a business will be so-called power users, or Excel Wizards, and they're perfectly happy with stochastic numerical output. Others may be less so, but catering to both is equally important. Business intelligence is, after all, not intelligent if it can't be understood.

The same applies for basic things, like graphical user interfaces. The financial services industry has never been known for its aesthetic prowess when it comes to market data platforms, or trade blotters, or order management systems, outside of putting a few gradients on line graphs. Other industries do this expectionally well. My housemate, for instance, works as a graphic artist for a software company related to the visual effects industry. His job, for the past year, has essentially been making things look pretty for websites and GUIs (slacker).

Yes, the nuts and bolts are important. But when designing these products, it might be best to spare a moment for the poor consumer.