[Sigia-l] "Standard" interfaces? (was: DHTML Menus and Usability)

[David Heller]

I agree w/ everything Paula said except she missed one major point which
I'm pretty sure she is aware of. Users don't buy software at the
corporate level. IT staff do and IT staff are a hard nut to crack into
new spaces, making all our missions that much harder.
 
Then there is just the other stuff that our lot has to deal with.
 
1. We don't choose our technologies. Sorry, we wish we did but we can't,
they are chosen by a mix of stuff and we are but a small pawn in that
mix. For example (for right or wrong), I'm on a quest from G-d to change
our internet distributed app from an HTML based app to something more
robust. Will it happen? NO! Why? b/c no other technology by itself does
what HTML does as well. This may be an arguable point and I would LOVE
any support to help my quest.
 
Here are the problems: 
Customizations have to be able to be done by the customer. Not
configurations, but customizations. Our apps can work out of the box
(but why would anyone want to do that), but they have to be completely
customizeable. Some of these customizations are so severe that I don't
even recognize the original out of the box version in what I'm seeing.
Flash and Java being built around bytecode for the most don't allow this
level of customization AND! they aren't nearly as standard as HTML is.
Sheesh, between MS JVM and Sun JVM alone you can go to Freud and never
be cured.
 
Perceptions around technologies that Java and Flash aren't as safe or
good or secure or whatever. These are hard perceptions to break.
 
Lets face it, HTML is damn! easy to build in compared to other UI
generation tools. A cost benefit to us that we get to pass on to our
customers.
 
2. Marketing: Features sell improvements don't. don't really have to add
more to that.
 
3. Customers: Feature requests grow exponentially while our time to
market between releases DECREASES! in order to meet greater demand in
this topsy-turvey stock market.
 
4. Oh! Analysts ... they are the devil in carnate. There are both
financial and market analysts who can break a company w/ their finger
and VERY few are interested in usability.
 
That being said, I don't want people to think that I'm a stagnant
designer doing things on historical analysis alone. Documentum is
actually pushing its latest UIs in places that I think our competitors
can't even come close to w/ our latest release, which was just
announced.

I think this is the difference between web site design and web
application design. When I say application, I mean building a tool that
will be resold over and over again, as opposed to an application that is
single purpose like a stock trading site.

-- dave