This week I’ll be profiling a few of the people attending Jive’s Enterprise UI Summit, which is Thursday & Friday in Aspen.

What are you currently focused on at Google?

I am currently the lead designer for Google Sites, a new wiki tool launched earlier this year based on the old Jotspot product. We give people tools to collaborate and share information while expressing their own personalized style.

Is there such thing as an Enterprise User Interface? What does it mean to you?

I don’t believe there should be a distiction between a Consumer and an Enterprise UI, but in reality there is a big difference. In a consumer product you must immediately show the product value out of the box – you need to hook your customers and keep them coming back – especially for socially-driven products where the network effect is so strong. In Enterprise products, user experience is rarely a top priority (although I consistently argue it should be) – instead of direct user feedback there are 15-20 loud voices from a 3rd party (those who have purchased the application) setting product direction.  Many of these applications require end-user training just to roll them out. Training is always a necessary part of a product, but it shouldn’t be a pre-requisite to actually using the core product.

What makes a good UI?

A good UI should be invisible to the user as it clearly presents the needed information to the user when they need it. It should encourage exploration for more advanced features, but it shouldn’t compromise the simplicity of the task at hand. Users should quickly understand and see the core value of the application. Consistency is a must!

What are some examples of good and bad Enterprise UIs?

I love OneNote – I love how flexible, yet structured I could make it. Little bits of structured data mixed through my notes – I love how flexible it is. OneNote has a nice out of the box experience – many of the powerful features (custom note flags) are hidden until you explore a bit and want to add.

I used to really love Outlook (which I think has a great UI), but after joining Google and making the transition to Gmail, I haven’t looked back. Gmail doesn’t have all of the bells and whistles that Outlook has, but I rarely used the advanced features – and the simplicity of Gmail is refreshing (yes, I am drinking the Google koolaid – and loving it)

There are so many examples of bad Enterprise UI’s – every time and expense system out there. (although maybe that is the point … if I can’t get my expenses into the system, I won’t get reimbursed).

Why is enterprise software user interface and user experience been a lack of focus, historically?

Many times the person who buys and signs the check for the software isn’t actually the end user – so direct user feedback isn’t getting back to the engineers. The applications that exist in many companies are necessary parts of peoples jobs, as a worker they get training and learn to deal with the issues. We need an end-user revolt to help get the message up where it belongs.

Do you see change occurring and if so, what’s driving that change?

User experience is finally becoming an industry standard. While the change will be slow, starting the conversation about it is a step forward. Competition in the market is always helpful – to be the best you need to be loved by your users. More analysis that looks at data-quality when evaluating a piece of software’s impact may start to demonstrate that poor UIs lead to poor data in many cases – and devalue the gains that these tools can bring.

What’s uniquely hard about designing for enterprise software?

There are many challenges, but one of the challenges I faced in my previous job was designing an application that was flexible enough to accommodate so many unique use cases. The product was always implemented by a professional services organization which took much of the UI out of my hands.
Now the end user is also facing implementation introduced UI challenges.

Often release cycles are so long that user feedback (if captured) isn’t factored into the design until the next cycle – at that point it becomes a lower priority than new features. Also as the release gets closer and closer scope cuts are made and sadly its the experience that pays the price.

What do you hope to get out of the Enterprise UI Summit this week?

The UI Summit will bring together people in other companies who are facing some of the same challenges as I do. I find it extremely valuable to trade war-stories, whether they end up as successes and failures. It is rare to get a group of people who are in the same predicament as I have been and continue to be.