Enterprise application dimensions

Posted on Wednesday October 11, 2006 by Julian I. Kamil

Prior to the age of Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0, it is a well accepted practice in enterprise application development—and application development in general—that to develop a good application business, technology, and human factors requirements must all be considered.

Obviously, the application must be a solution to some business problem, must be delivered in the context and constraints of some technical environments, and, to be usable, must follow good human factors engineering principles to be compatible with the intended end user’s human capabilities and limitations. In theory, these three dimensions are equally important, but in practice, we all know it, typical enterprise applications severely lack healthy and humane user interfaces.

The problem with enterprise applications

These applications are really difficult to use, which may have something to do with their gravely outdated user interfaces; they don’t make sense and don’t fit how we really perform our jobs; and either they come with thousands of pages of unreadable user’s guide or with a minimal help facility that never really helps. Obviously, these are generalizations. There are good enterprise applications out there, but by far, the majority of them fit this description. Come to think of it, even a lot of non-enterprise, general desktop applications fit this description, unless you use a Mac. The diagram below is meant to illustrate this sad reality, showing a reduced size arrow in the direction of human factors considerations.

Now, here is the interesting question: “Could this situation be improved by applying Web 2.0 application development principles to the enterprise?”

I know that like me, you are likely a Web 2.0 proponent. But let’s not go too fast and answer the question in a hurry. Before doing that, I would like to point out something else. Let’s look at the diagram below.

If Enterprise 2.0 is to be a true application of Web 2.0 principles, there will be four dimensions of requirements to consider when developing enterprise applications: business, technology, human:personal, and human:social.

The social thing to consider

It’s true, Web 2.0 applications are that much more usable because of a higher degree of consideration to the human factors. However, there are now two dimensions to these: personal and social. This is a great departure from the traditional view of human factors (at least with respect to enterprise applications), and frankly, it is the one thing that truly differentiates Web 2.0 applications from their predecessors. Flickr is not just great because you can easily post and view your digital photos online, but it is outstanding because you can share and have discussions about them, with everyone. del.icio.us is not just about easily managing your own collection of bookmarks and tags, but, quite the contrary, it is almost everything about sharing them with everyone else. Jobster is not just for posting your resume or finding job opportunities, it is about sharing knowledge of the jobs and the companies that you may already be working for or be interested in joining. And so on…

Therein lies the big challenge for Enterprise 2.0 to gain mainstream adoption.

The problem is, not only there is very little precedence of successful application of social software in the enterprise, but also there are natural forces that may be going against it. In his Sloan Management Review article, Andrew McAfee describes this as the possible unintended outcomes of Enterprise 2.0:

Intranets today reflect one viewpoint—that of management—and not platforms for dissent or debate. After blogs, wikis and other voice-giving technologies appear, this will change. However, the question remains: Will the change be welcomed?

And further:

These tools reduce management’s ability to exert unilateral control and will be used to express some level of negativity. Do a company’s leaders really want this to happen? Will they be able to resist the temptation to silence dissent?

Once more, Web 2.0 is not just about rounded rectangles and glossy company logos—we can just all go home if it were just that. It is more about making the human experience richer and more complete, making it include both our personal and social dimensions. Maybe, like what some had said, we need to have Management 2.0 in place before going Enterprise 2.0… Maybe.

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