The iRise Blog

What are Rich Internet Applications (RIA) and how can your organization use them?

Maurice Martin, iRise President, COO and Founder, wrote an article recently that answered these questions for Hotel Business Review Executive magazine.

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:

1. Not understanding customer needs
2. Implementing for technology’s sake
3. Creating a distracting experience
4. Reduced web site performance
5. 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.

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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.

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The iRise Professional Services team has created a tremendous resource that is a must download for all iRise Users.  This new iDoc, called the iRise 6 - Common Samples, is comprised of 53 iRise examples covering a wide range of data functionaliy, RIA and advanced interactions.  A few of the documented Samples include: accordian panes, alternate views, autopopulation, portlets, table behaviors, data operations, datasheet actions and search.

One happy iRise user who already downloaded the Common Samples iDoc had this to say, “This is one of iRise’s best pro-active customer service moves.  So smart.  Big props to those who built them in the PS Group.”

The iDoc is provided as a convenience for all users to learn advanced features and improve their knowledge of iRise.  The iDoc is available for download from the iRise Users section of the Catalyze Community.  You must be sign into the Catalyze Community and have iRise User Permissions to download the iDoc.  If you are not yet a member of Catalyze or the iRise Users Communities, you can get more information and register from this link.

Here are the key links to the Common Samples documents in Catalyze.

• Common Samples iDoc
• Common Samples Discussion
• Common Samples Table of Contents

Each Sample contains a description of the functionality, the degree of difficulty, steps to demonstrate the functionality and steps on how to build the simulation in iRise as noted below:

Enjoy!  If you have any comments or questions about the Common Samples iDoc, please use the Common Samples discussion forum in Catalyze.  And thank you iRise Professional Services.

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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:

• iRise iPhone press release
• Article from CIO.com and INTEROP

And here is the YouTube video produced by OneSpring which demos the iRise iPhone capability:

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Emmet Keeffe, iRise CEO and Co-founder, had an opinion piece published this week in SandHill.com.  SandHill.com is the premier destination online destination for strategic information on the software business. The site and its newsletters are read by thousands of top software industry executives every week.

Emmet talks about “The Requirement Challenge” and why “Accurate Specs are Key”.  He finishes with “The Benefits of Visualization” which I am paraphrasing below:

• Business people can fully experience the product and make changes early in the process, saving significant time and downstream costs.
• Developers can catch design and functional errors before an application goes into production.
• The process can speed through multiple rounds of functional visual edits to quickly reach decisions on business needs and customer experience.
• Managers can increase final adoption of system with upfront agreements of the application’s process flow, experience and visual look and feel.
• User experience professionals can rapidly iterate proposed designs directly in front of customers, dramatically improving customer experience.
• Software sales teams can demo potential products to customers to get feedback before actually developing the application.
• The professional service teams can test a potential product for possible needed changes to speed implementation and integration.
• Sharing visualizations with global sourcing partners is not only easier but cheaper. Visualizations eliminate confusion with global development teams because everyone is speaking the same language.
• Resellers can sell a solution by showing a visualization of what a specific application could do when integrated into the customer’s environment

He wraps up by repeating his vision, “by 2020, all business software will be visualized before its built, just the same way that every car, airplane and semiconductor are visualized today.”

The entire piece is worth a read and can be found at SandHill.com.

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Is your software simple and usable?

There was an interesting opinion piece at Sandhill.com last week titled “Simplicity: What’s Next in Business Software” by Anthony Deighton of QlikTech. 

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.

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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.

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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:

1. RIAs provide the perfect vehicle for splashy sites
   • they are also amazing tools for complex, transactional, data-driven sites too
2. 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
3. If you’ve designed websites, you can design RIAs
   • that’s not necessarily true
4. It’s just like our software, of course our users will understand it
   • think again — there are lots of ways to do things
5. 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.

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What are Rich Internet Applications or RIAs? Are they the panacea for everything that ails us? Are they the perfect vehicle for sexy, splashy sites? Do RIAs provide a better user experience?

Learn more about RIAs from User Experience expert Laurie Gray of OneSpring in this month’s Catalyze Community Webcast. Laurie will discuss some of the most common attitudes toward RIA’s and address the 5 biggest myths surrounding this exciting technology. 

• Title - The Five Myths of RIAs featuring Laurie Gray 
• Date and Time — Tuesday, March 18 at 11am Pacific/2pm Eastern
• Registration — Sign up at this link
• Recording – If you miss the live broadcast, the recording and presentation will be posted in Catalyze by March 20

Laurie has lived in the world of user experience since 1995 and  is a user experience expert with OneSpring - one of iRise’s strategic partners and 2007 Partner of the Year.  She also wrote an article on Best Practices in User Experience last year.

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In the March 2008 issue of the Harvard Business Review, David Upton and Bradley Staats from the Harvard Business School wrote an article about a radically new approach to developing IT systems called the path-based approach. As the authors state in the opening sentence, “enterprise IT projects continue to be a headache for business leaders.”

The article is a case study of Japan’s Shinsei Bank IT department and how they revolutionized retail banking in Japan.  Masamoto Yashiro, the former chairman of Citibank Japan, was brought in as the new CEO in 2000 and he hired Jay Dvivedi, who used to run IT operations for Citibank Japan as his Chief Information Officer.  Together, they led the development of a new enterprise IT system using the path-based method of application development. They call it the path-based approach because it focuses on providing a path for the system to be developed instead of attempting to define all of the specifications or requirements for a system before the project is launched. Shinsei succeeded in developing and deploying an entirely new enterprise system in one year at a cost of $55 million. 

Traditionally, there are two choices for building a major enterprise system - the “big bang” approach of replacing the current system and processes all at once or the incremental method of improving the existing system one piece at a time.  Shinsei did not want the risk of the “big bang” method and did not have the time to implement the incremental method, so they chose a third method called the path-based method.  Some of the principles of the path-based method are variations on old themes while others are totally unconventional. 

Here are some things they learned:

Don’t just align business and IT strategies - forge them together — Besides having the CIO report to the CEO, Shinsei business managers spend significant amounts of time in learning about IT.  In addition, they focus on understanding “foreseeable business objectives” and the interaction between business and IT groups is iterative and continuous.

Strive for extreme simplicity — Shinsei succeeded by employing the simplest possible technologies.  There were three keys to their simpler approach, limit the number of standards, create simple re-usable solutions and apply modularity to clearly specify user interfaces.

Give (some) power to the people — Many project failures stem from organized resistance to new systems.  When Shinsei rolls out a new system, they start by offering an interface that is similar to the old system - and only after users are comfortable with a new system do they turn off the old screens.  Shinsei also created a system for including feedback and requests from employees, customers, business users and technical users.  Comments have averaged about 100 requests per day which helps Shinsei continually improve systems and processes.

The conclusion is that “businesses must focus on building IT systems that cannot fail to improve…and adopting the path-based approach will provide flexible systems that can change as the business demands and can shift IT from being a simple platform for existing operations to a launchpad for new functions and brand new businesses.” 

Imagine what would happen if you marry path-based method of application development with the visualization capabilities of iRise? 

The complete article is a worthwhile read and is currently available for free from the Harvard Business Review website.

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