I’ve summarized some key points below and you can get a copy of the article from the iRise Website.
“RIAs represent a real opportunity for companies to improve their online offerings because they are the tools that provide Web designers the greatest flexibility in meeting the needs of your brand. But added richness will not always equate to an improved (or even a good) experience. At every point, you must think about what the best possible experience is for your customers.”
The article also included a discussion of the five pitfalls of adopting RIA:
Not understanding customer needs
Implementing for technology’s sake
Creating a distracting experience
Reduced web site performance
Limited metrics tracking and reporting
If you are interested in learning if RIA is right for you and how to avoid the risks, be sure check out the article.
SOA or service-oriented architecture is a chronically hot topic - and there are as many opinions about it as there are IT vendors. According to Wikipedia, SOA is “is a computer system’s architectural style for creating and using business processes, packaged as services, throughout their lifecycle. SOA also defines and provisions the IT infrastructure to allow different applications to exchange data and participate in business processes.” And for a more humorous definition of SOA overload, check out Greg the Architect in the “SOA This, SOA That” video from YouTube.
We recently had an interesting internal email discussion on how iRise deals with SOA and I have excerpted the highlights below:
From Sherrick Murdoff, VP of Alliances and Business Development:
“SOA is most often interpreted as back-end plumbing only, but this is not the case. SOA includes the back-end plumbing, but you don’t start with the back-end plumbing and you don’t start with building web services
What many CIOs and industry leaders have learned and are promoting is to start with the customer experience – this should drive your SOA implementation more than anything. iRise lets you visualize the customer experience and iterate with both end-users and IT to gain alignment on what needs to be built that drives the “how”
Visualizing SOA is important to let the customer experience drive the requirements for what infrastructure you need to put in place
iRise aligns well in any SOA discussion and brings the customer back to what is important – visualizing “what” you need before you begin to think about the “how” you want to implement.”
From Matt Smith, Senior Enterprise Solutions Manager
“Most people over-think the relationship between SOA and simulating applications. SOA basically means there is a provider (machine) and a consumer (machine or human) of a service.
The processing of the service is all the back-end wizardry that goes on within the SOA, which iRise doesn’t diagram in the traditional sense of architecture modeling tools, but it does simulate the action.
The line of business manager and end-user don’t care how the SOA actually processes the service request. iRise simulates the important bit from their perspective of application usability.”
From James McWethy, Enterprise Solutions Director
“SOA…three loaded letters. I’ve seen companies spend years talking about defining and implementing an SOA strategy.
Why not simulate the end-user experience that will result from the tiresome SOA planning process to: (1) Verify that the information being delivered via the service (informational or transactional) will be of value to the end user, and (2) simulate a set of components (portlets, widgets, gadgets, web parts, etc.) that will show the end result of a system comprised of multiple services.
iRise Customer Success Story - At Fusion ‘07, the Customer Experience team from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan gave a presentation on how they used iRise to simulate a technical proof of concept for their new member portal. The presentation is available here and can be viewed here.
So, why risk building your SOA infrastructure without using iRise to engaging your end-users? By simulating the end-user experience with iRise first, both business stakeholders and IT will win.
We announced the immediate availability of the iRise simulation template for the iPhone at the Interop and Software 2008 conferences yesterday.
“iRise for iPhone”™ gives business analysts, user experience (UX) professionals and others a way to quickly prototype the look, feel and behavior of iPhone applications by making available pre-defined visualization widgets and templates that can be quickly assembled into a high definition mobile applications.
The template can simulate all of the iPhone’s standard menu icons and user actions, such as using sliders and zooming in and out of screens by “pinching” and “unpinching.” Application designers can use it to create custom buttons, manipulate the menu icons and define the effects of actions such as double-tapping a button.
Our alliance partner, OneSpring, developed the capability and is also providing the “OneSpring iPhone SimDK for iRise”.
Chuck Converse, a senior user experience architect at OneSpring noted, “Most applications, if you design them for mobile devices, are very text-heavy. The iPhone’s display capabilities give designers more freedom and a whole new set of choices.”
The full story is available from these related links:
We are very pleased to announce that the first annual iRise “Visualize the Prize” Commercial Contest starts today and has a total cash prize of $20,000.
Why are we doing this? According to chief marketing officer, Mitch Bishop, “We know we have passionate and creative users, and we want to let them share their passion with us and the broader iRise User community”.
So, what does it take to win? Are you passionate about iRise? Has iRise changed your life or the way you do business? Are you creative? Do you have a great idea for telling the world about the power of visualization? Do you have a great way to motivate others to buy iRise? Help us tell the world by creating a 30 to 60 second commercial about iRise and you could win $15,000.
Make us laugh, make us cry, make us think, make us say “wow, we didn’t think of that!” or “whoa, we didn’t think of that”. You have total creative control to write, cast, direct and shoot your commercial.
We encourage you to tell us how you have used visualization and iRise to create something special. Did you speed time to market, increase innovation, improve user experience or reduce costs? Note that 30% of the judging criteria will be based on the liklihood to motivitate people to buy or try iRise.
What are the contest details? A summary of the contest information has been copied below and is available from the contest website at www.irisevideo.com. Please bookmark the website so you can check back frequently for new video submissions - and don’t forget to vote for your favorites during the voting period in June.
Prizes:
The 1st place winner will receive $15,000
Two Runner-up winners will receive $2,500 each
Dates:
Contest starts Tuesday April 8, 2008
Contest ends Wednesday June 4, 2008
Top 10 semifinalists selected on June 6, 2008
Voting period runs from Friday June 6, 2008 to Friday June 20, 2008
Contest Process:
Create a completely original commercial – 30 to 60 seconds long
Anthony pointed out that the gap between what software users experience in their workplace and in the rest of their life is widening while the line between work and home continues to blur. Business users are starting to expect that the applications they use at work be as clear, user-friendly, intuitive and simple as the other software they use.
The bottom line is that enterprise software vendors must “simplify or die” by embracing a philosophy of simplicity or risk getting left behind in the future by innovative and emerging vendors.
There are several characteristics of “simple” software that Anthony lists in his piece, including:
Continue to offer robustness - “simple” is not the same as “lite”
Focus on the user - enterprise software vendors need to focus on the user for a change
Revamp the value chain - make sure you pick partner vendors and service providers who embrace the simplicity vision
Deliver a fast sales and implementation process - the product must be easy for users, but also deliver quick value to the business
Relentlessly pursue simplicity - you have to keep focusing on making your product usable and faster to deploy
Check out the full article and complete discussion thread from this link.
According to an article in InformationWeek, a recent survey shows a decline in citizen satisfaction with eGovernment portals and Websites. The survey was conducted by the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) and shows the lowest satisfaction score in three years. Not surprisingy, a good portion of the angst is being caused by poor experience using these sites. According to Larry Freed, president and CEO of ForeSee Results and author of the report; “Some government Web sites may be holding off on putting the necessary resources into improving the citizen experience until they have a better sense of whether or not they’ll be able to finish what they start. Unfortunately, citizens are the big losers when e-government is in limbo.”
I couldn’t agree more.
Government agencies are clearly playing catch-up to their commercial brethren in focusing on customer experience, but it’s quickly becoming an imperative as computer-savvy baby boomers become increasingly active with government services. Not to mention Millenials that expect to interact with the DMV, voter registration and everything else under the sun through the Web. And guess what? Commercial sites of all kinds are setting a high bar; they’re becoming richer in design, content and transactional capabilities every day.
Visualization is becoming a key strategy for moving user-centric design to the front-end of critical projects in the commercial sector. Just look at what Wachovia, WaMu, CitiBank and others are doing. Customer experience is the hot topic of the day across financial services, retail and other industries that are driven by reducing contact center traffic, improving conversion rates and increasing order size.
“The truth is out there,” to borrow a line from the old X-Files TV show.
It’s time that visualization become a standard on government projects as well. We will all benefit.
Laurie Gray from OneSpring (an iRise Strategic Partner) shared her thoughts on Rich Internet Applications or RIA during the monthly Catalyze webcast yesterday.
She started out with the RIA “elevator pitch” from Tony MacDonell who writes the InsideRIA blog:
“Rich Internet Applications are software programs that are designed to run above the level of the operating system, and are universally available to you, where ever you may be when you need to use them. You can run them on any computer, in any context. Run them in the web browser, on the desktop, or even on mobile devices as well. Rich Internet Applications offer powerful user interfaces, that allow you to work or play in ways that are familiar, intuitive, and exciting. They leverage the best of the web, without sacrificing the power of the desktop.”
She also shared the origins of the term Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) which first appeared in an essay by Jesse James Garrett from adaptive path in February 2005.
According to Laurie, the five myths of RIA are:
RIAs provide the perfect vehicle for splashy sites
they are also amazing tools for complex, transactional, data-driven sites too
RIAs bring people-centered design to information workspaces
most users will not care how the app was built, but if they have a bad experience, they won’t come back
If you’ve designed websites, you can design RIAs
that’s not necessarily true
It’s just like our software, of course our users will understand it
think again — there are lots of ways to do things
RIAs provide a better user experience than traditional HTML
it depends — and sometimes it can be a worse experience
Laurie wrapped up with a demo of her favorite RIA websites and a list of valuable resources before answering a spirited round of questions.
The presentation slides embedded below and webcast recording are available from the Catalyze Community. Some of the questions from the webcast are also answered in Laurie’s Catalyze blog.
The CIO of CompuCredit gave a compelling talk this week on how to drive ‘disciplined innovation’ at the annual Computerworld Premier 100 conference in Orlando, FL. Dr. Guido Sacchi was honored at the conference as one of the top 100 CIOs in the country and is one of those CIOs that could easily be a COO or CEO in any company. He has that unusual ‘right brain - left brain’ combination that is powerful stuff in a business leader. According to Dr. Sacchi, ‘disciplined innovation’ is characterized by companies that have a high degree of execution skill, along with a high attitude for risk - another unusual combination of (corporate) skill sets. In his lively talk he spoke about the challenges that many CIOs face today: governance, too many ideas with too little execution and long cycle times; all of which tend to mire innovation in the mud of good intentions.
At CompuCredit they’ve solved these problems with leadership, focused execution of innovative new ideas and leveraging visualization as a strategy to dramatically reduce cycle times. CompuCredit has established an ‘innovation council’ made up of senior executives and other people in the company. They’ve also launched an ‘Idea Factory;’an internal Website that gives employees a platform to voice new ideas.
Using iRise to visualize applications during rapid, iterative and collaborative definition phases allows CompuCredit to “fail cheaply and fail fast,” according to Dr. Sacchi. And visualization is allowing the company to create “iPod equivalents;” applications that are so intuitive they require no training nor user manuals. Dr. Sacchi noted that iRise is also helping the IT organization drive higher quality applications to market faster, along with giving the company sourcing options that would not otherwise be available.
If you’re interested in learning more about CompuCredit’s approach, watch this video of Dr. Sacchi speaking at the iRise user conference in October.
What are some of the unique things your organization is doing to drive innovation? Any additional tips you can share?
Project risk is keeping federal computer analysts (aka “business analysts” in the private sector) up at night. InformationWeek recently reported on some statistics by the U.S. Office of Management & Budget (OMB) where CIO Karen Evans was quoted as saying “there are 585 projects valued at $27B on the ‘management watch list,’ although some of those have also been deemed high risk. Projects can be deemed high risk for a variety of reasons, including being high-cost, highly complex, or high profile.” Typically project failure results in rework which we define as being a result of any, or all, of these factors:
IT built a different project than the agency envisioned
the application has missing features
citizens or government employees won’t adopt it because it’s too hard to use
Mastering the customer experience is probably one of the single biggest playbook pages the government is now borrowing from private industry. It’s moving towards making agency sites as easy-to-use as highly trafficked consumer information and e-commerce sites such as Amazon, Travelocity and eBay. Adopting a customer-centric practice in application development means that crucial stakeholder buy-in happens up front, in the design phase of the project. It also means that usability testing happens before the application is built and with real end users.
“The public sector does not buy IT for IT’s sake, but rather is driven by advancing the President’s priorities and providing citizens with easy accessibility to information.”
Today, we announced our entry into the federal market, led by Dean Terry with Spectrum Systems as our reseller. iRise helps to increase the success rates for federal IT projects because stakeholders – including the employees in the trenches – have the opportunity to test drive the application before it’s built. The release on our third round of funding, also issued today, referenced expansion into new markets and our entrance into the public sector signals the first example of that.
Learn more about iRise’s solution for the federal market by visiting this industry-specific page.
Are you having trouble communicating with your stakeholders? Do you want to improve how you gather requirements?
If so, you should join the Catalyze Community monthly webcast on February 14th with Barbara Carkenord from B2T Training as she explains how to design a sure-fire strategy for developing a communication plan.
Both business analysts and usability professionals will be more effective when they think ahead about how best to communicate with their stakeholders. This presentation provides attendees with a communication planning technique that can easily be used on any project.
Webcast Details:
Date and Time — Thursday, February 14 at 11am Pacific/2pm Eastern
Recording – If you miss the live broadcast, the recording and presentation will be posted in Catalyze by February 18
Barbara is the President of B2T Training and has over 20 years experience in business analysis. Barbara has an MBA from University of Michigan and is a Certified Business Analysis Professional (CBAP).
SOA or service-oriented architecture is a chronically hot topic - and there are as many opinions about it as there are IT vendors. According to 
We announced the immediate availability of the iRise simulation template for the iPhone at the Interop and 
Laurie Gray from 
Project risk is keeping federal computer analysts (aka “business analysts” in the private sector) up at night. InformationWeek recently 
Are you having trouble communicating with your stakeholders? Do you want to improve how you gather requirements?