Ux (User Experience)

 User Experience.

What does that mean to you?

Is it important to your company? To your customers?

Does it add you your ROI?

These are some of the questions that are running thru the minds of people around the world today.

With the advent of technologies, we are being pushed to improve our services more and more. There is more competition, but victory belongs to those who rise up to the challenge and give their users something extraordinary.

Extraordinary! Now that's a word that never used to be associated with User Interfaces!

Years ago when the internet and the email were just starting up, I used to love to go to different sites and sign up for many email accounts – not because I was trying to mess up the mail providers, but because I longed for an user experience that exited me… Silly as it may sound, the email UI was just not satisfactory to me. There was something missing.

Then came along Microsoft Outlook. Cool stuff. But still… It was a desktop client app. But I wanted something in the browser.

Then Gmail came, revolutionizing the way we use email. Asynchronous JavaScript and XML!

Hotmail Live! Giving you drag and drop features, providing you some of the Microsoft Outlook functionalities in your browser!

Outlook Web Access (OWA), providing all the features of Microsoft Outlook in a web browser.

Live Image Search! First time I saw it, I couldn’t believe it was showcasing images with preview and providing thumbnail resizing features just like a desktop app would!

These apps changed the expectations of people.

The first maps available on the web used postbacks. They gave you buttons:

Move the Map Up,

Move the map Down,

Move the map Left,

Move the map Right,

Zoom In,

Zoom Out.

But how many of us had the patience to wait for so many postbacks. Using a paper map was much better!

Then came in Google maps, again changing the way we use maps.

Look at ww.pageflakes.com . Amazing!

These apps and technologies are changing the expectations of our users.

Two years ago, these apps would wow users.

Now? It’s expected!

We, who are providing Web Apps to our customers, can’t run away, because we have to remember that, even if we are not exposing our customers to such a intuitive User Experience, doesn’t mean that they are not acquiring a taste for it.

Other sites are making sure that users are getting comfortable with these UIs.

Before long, this User Experience will be expected out of our apps, portals and company websites.

Time to take a step to prepare for the next web is now.

Time to talk and discuss has passed by.

The time when our customers will demand this next generation User Experience is creeping with a steady and fast pace.