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

What Enterprise Software topics currently fascinate you?

Microsharing. I’ve experienced and watched others experience some deceptively powerful, profound changes in their lives, career, productivity and network through applications like Twitter.

We’re focusing our resources now on determining the use cases, best practices and business results when you take that to a much broader group of people. These lightweight, engaging communications harness the power of loose ties and create network effects most people can’t imagine when they first start. In fact, when most first start, microsharing seems pretty dumb. It’s not. We’re helping large enterprises and those who design enterprise software understand why and what to do with that power to create significant value.

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

Most of the ones I’ve interacted with — and that’s not a large number — were complex and appeared more driven by feature sets than by benefits and user needs. Human factors are really important to drive adoption. Your tool could fix every business problem known to humankind, but if it’s too hard to use, it won’t accomplish anything much at all.

What makes a good UI?

Simplicity and gently guided navigation. People can see where to begin, and what they might do at first. Good UI “flexes” with the user, keeping it simple at first blush while permitting ways for the power-user to dig in deeply. Some will engage in a way that’s a bit more complex.

What are some examples of good and bad Enterprise UIs?

One UX that drives me nuts and seems to occur on MANY platforms is line spacing. WSYIWYG text editors on wikis, blog tools, CRM and other software are so often NOT quite WYSIWYG when it comes to line breaks, spacing, etc. If you’re technically advanced and you understand the subtle reasons why, it may seem like no big deal. But if you’re an end user frustrated because your work is taking much too long, you’re just going to user the software less or less fully.

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

Perhaps it is just the IT/technical origins. Too much focus on feature sets and what can technically be done, not how the software will actually be used. I’d like to see more simplified, versatile tools that employees can learn quickly, not be daunted by, and then adopt and stretch to serve the needs they have on a daily basis.

Constraints spur creativity. Build things that users can employ to serve their own needs, not the ones that were conceptualized for them in great detail during the design and planning stages.

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

I hope change will occur. Employees are experiencing more two-way, engaged, “social” applications out “in the wild” and enterprise UI design will have to keep pace with that.

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

I’m excited by the potential of simpler, more versatile tools to draw more enterprises into using Enterprise “2.0″ software. I want to share and hear ideas about how the microsharing user experience can function as its own internal social network, and play out across other applications and services.