User Experience
We’re deep into self service. I’m now responsible for the user experience. We use many applications - PeopleSoft HRMS, internally developed applications for compensation and talent, other vendor’s products for recruiting, time and attendance and more. There aren’t many standard processes. There are multiple service centers. Is this a headache or a green field?
It looks like I’m going to travel to a number of cities in the UK, Germany, Japan, Singapore, Australia, Latin America and the US to run focus groups and usability sessions with HRs, managers and employees. I’d like to hear what you’d like someone like me to ask. What would you like to have changed? What should we fix? What should we never, never do?
Thanks for your input!
October 14th, 2005 at 7:05 pm
A major bug bear of mine is the lack of consistent user experience we have in ESS/MSS applications. The experience needs to extend beyond the application. How many processes have a different experience? If there are still paper forms for these provide the same experience as each other? A great “sexy” new UI will not keep users if the process is easy to execute. However the new sexy technology (like AJAX) does allow developers to build an easy to use tool that can support a streamlined process.
At the end of the day it does not really matter what you do, bur you need to manage the trust and expectations of your users.
October 15th, 2005 at 5:23 pm
Agreed, Michael. I believe the experience starts when someone decides they need to do X; it extends to paper, web sites, manuals, applications, service centers, emails, etc. I’m not talking about an interface design (although that’s a part of it) but the end-to-end experience. I object to requiring a 2-hour ‘Manager Self-Service’ training course. I often ask, why isn’t training required to use eBay or Amazon? If hard dollars were at stake we might get better interfaces, but we don’t seem to care if we waste employee’s time with confusing processes or bad experiences. And we blame them in the end.