OAUG Fusion Strategy Council @ OOW 2009: Final Thoughts

By Misha Vaughan
Architect, Applications User Experience, Oracle

The Sunday before OpenWorld is usually a sedate day as most attendees are only just beginning to get geared up for Openworld. Not so at the OAUG Fusion Strategy Council SIG hosted by Floyd Teter, of Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

I was impressed with the energy and enthusiasm of the speakers which also included Jeremy Ashley, Vice President of Applications User Experience, Oracle and Katie Candland, Senior Director, Fusion User Experience, Oracle.

The trio were discussing Oracle’s Next Generation Applications User Experience. After the event, I had the chance to sit down with two of the speakers and ask each of them about their final thoughts. Floyd was otherwise engaged due to his brand new baby granddaughter. (congratulations!)

Misha: Jeremy, for those who couldn’t attend OpenWorld this year, what would you most like the OAUG readership to know?

Jeremy: The most important thing is the level to which we've [Oracle] listened to customers. Oracle has invested a lot in user experience. It's not our job to sit in a room and decide how our users work, we go out into the field and study how our users actually work to design our software.

For example, going out to customers we got a number of main messages. Our users don't work in one silo. To do a task, they need to navigate across application boundaries. They need to keep things in context. The don't just perform transactions, they need tools that help them develop insight.

We got feedback that was passed all the way to the Fusion Middleware (FMW) teams. FMW has been built to create well-designed user experiences including WebCenter Suite and the Application Development Framework.

Misha: Katie, you've been elbow deep designing Oracle's next generation applications, what are the most important user experience benefits?

Katie: We took a total design approach. We started with best practice business process models. We optimized the navigation. Looked for places where information and intelligence were needed to support decisions.

Then we identified places where communication and collaboration tools could smooth the process. We looked at how user assistance can be crafted and placed in the context of the flow and screen.

By considering each of these pieces in the early stages of the design, we built them into the user experience rather than bolting them on, as an afterthought.

We surround an end user's primary work with information, tools and services so the user can stay in context and work seamlessly across applications. We bring together all the right information, in the right place at the right time. Transactional, collaborative, and analytical modes of work are combined in a single interface. End-users do not need to jump back and forth between un-integrated enterprise, desktop, and web applications, each with its own look and behavior.

Visit the Oracle Applications User Experience Web site for more information.