Kevin Francis:: Yes, but... : User Interface Architecture

BA World Slides Available

Kevin Francis — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 04:30:00 GMT

I have made the slides from the BA World presentation on 'Business Analysts v Architects' available on Slideshare. Please let me know what you think, and if you would like me to come at present it in person at your organisation or user group please let me know. I'm always happy to come and present this topic or any of the other topics that are listed here.

Office 2010 - The Movie

Kevin Francis — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 08:28:00 GMT

www.office2010themovie.com - LoL!!

Clippy? Is clippy going to make a return? I would seem so.

I love this idea. I was (apparently) one of the few people that liked the Office Assistants (although Clippy wasn't the best). I thought they did an excellent job of 'humanising' what is a fairly bland set of software products (sorry Office Dev team - it does look nice, but only as cool as a productivity suite can be).

It got me thinking though about the whole concept, and while I don't know what the team is planning, and I can see a nightmare for system admins, Clippy as a portal to social networking for Office users would be a killer. Clippy delivering Twitter and Facebook messages? Clippy playing music files? Either way, I'm thinking that we are moving into a new phase of UI development where things start getting sexy and fun again. Windows 7 is certainly an advance on that front already.

I'll blog more as soon as I can lay my hands on a beta of Office 2010.

Architecture Big Bets - Part 1 - Replacing HTML (Finally!)

Kevin Francis — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 22:46:00 GMT

HTML is an excellent technology, and I truly raise my hat to Sir Tim Berners-Lee for inventing it. My suggestion is that by now HTML is no longer suitable as either an application development platform or is optimal an information delivery method in some cases. I’d like to present this theory as the first Architecture Big Bet.

You probably know my views on that I have been talking for some time now about the fact that desktop applications are better for internal applications that are used by users for a significant period of time. Well, the information that I have been posting here and talking about in presentations when I can has been aimed at awakening people to the options and opportunities and while technology has supported the message the widespread adoption has not been. I’ve been yelling into the ether hoping that people would hear and understand. Some have.

A number of factors are aligning to drive significant change in this area though. These are:

Greater amounts of bandwidth;
A focus on design thanks to Apple, Vista, mobile phones and other devices, and increasing consumerism;
Improvements in processing power and graphical capabilities of machines and operating systems; and
Availability of Silverlight.

I talk about Silverlight because Flash has not been able to achieve the same mindshare as Silverlight has even though it has been technically capable for some years. Also, I see Silverlight as a technology this is driving this trend.

The reason that Microsoft has achieved this state with Silverlight now, and that it will be the killer for user interfaces for all applications, is that:

It has been developed it from a data-driven application perspective;
That the interface between design and development is so smooth; and
It benefits from being the next generation.

Flash was never able to move beyond advertising because it was just that little bit too hard to do things other than graphical work in it.

I see that the future web applications will be increasingly developed with a rich UI such as Silverlight rather than HTML, and in preference to AJAX. This is great, because as well as the driving factors listed above we should realise that coding in script, AJAX, HTML or whatever combination of the above we use is just simply too hard, too expensive and too hard to maintain (even with tool support).

I think that this will be the case for both intranet and Internet content.

This shift obviously results in different architecture models, with greater capabilities on the client, and a greater focus on user interface design than has been the case in the past. It brings with it a focus on entirely different UI design approaches where it is no longer necessary to make applications look like Office (see earlier posts).

So, I suggest that:

Developers learn Silverlight;
Architects understand what this means and build processes for design and development accordingly;
Organisations look to employ designers; and
Architects, Developers, BA’s and UI designers understand the new UI design paradigms needed.

What do you think?

Technorati Tags: Silverlight,Architecture,Microsoft,future

It's all in the User Interface

Kevin Francis — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 10:13:00 GMT

You'd think that if I was going to start posting again then I would start by talking about what makes a good Architect or something given my last post, but I want to start by listing out some thoughts that I've had about user interfaces,

The current and next big thing in architecture is the user interface. This has been stated for some time now and anyone can see from Web 2.0 and AJAX that there is a shift towards more interactive and friendly UI's. I'd like to go one step better though and put out there that the major competition to come between organisations for customers in the future will be in the UI space. And it won't just be between who has the friendliest online banking application. Rather, it will be between who provides the funkiest, smartest application that integrates best into the customers' lifestyles. This won't be a simple matter of creating the best web site or mobile phone application either. In an ealier post I suggested that Windows client applications provided advantages from various perspectives (architecture, development and end-user) over Web applications. My thinking has evolved again from there now.

I'm suggesting that the up and coming savvy consumers of today are using a wider and wider range of technologies, are understanding the capabilities and uses of these technologies and understand where they fit into their lives and when and for what they would like to use them for. Add to this a range of technologies that are just around the corner in terms of wide-spread adoption and today's Architect should be looking much, much more broadly than just a Web UI in designing applications.

Second Life. Personally I find the concept of shopping in a city that looks like a city with shops that look like shops while being at home and online to be quite fascenaticing. I feel that it holds some of the keys to the future. Universities holding courses online and companies holding meetings in Second Life is just the start. Look to some of the real world organisations like Australia's ABC that are extending their real-world presence to Second Life in ways that they Web just can't allow. While some of the security and business-model issues need to be solved there is a lot of promise there and Architects would well be advised to get their minds around the concepts.
Microsoft Surface. I was lucky enough to use Surface myself earlier in 2007 and I can say that it does work just like the videos show. It is, to me, the single biggest advance in technology in an awfully long time. It represents a completely new way of interacting with people and objects and there are a huge variety of applications where surface could be applicable. It is a viable application development platform and Architects should examine it and understand it even if just for its pure technology factor.
Microsoft Photosynth. Another completely innovative technology - sort of Second Life on the web with a digital camera. Yes the demos are very cute and the technology is very cool, if a little hard to explain but I can see some wonderful opportunities with Phtotsynth from a business UI perspective. The ability to navigate and select objects in a 3D world that can be readily created without serious programming or modelling (very nearly by an end-user even) could provide some powerful UI options for online stores, builders, car retailers etc.
Game Consoles. Yes, Microsoft is now doing well with the 360 but if you thought the battle for the game console market is just about units and games, even if games are now higher-grossing than movies, then I would suggest that you look more closely. The games console is no longer a games console - it is an entertainment hub and as such I am keeping a careful eye on the 360 in particular as Live becomes more powerful and the line between Live and the Web and the 360 and the PC becomes more and more blurred. This might not mean the 360 surfing the web though, but I would not be surpised to see people shopping online for general products or doing onine banking throught the ubiquitous games consoles in the near future.
Media Center et al. Vista brings Media Center to the masses and as the platform powers up we'll see it and products like it start to change the face of home entertainment devices beyond the enthusiasts that currently use it. Accessing content and applications from Media Center will become a perferable way of performing common tasks for home users and they won't want to use the Web.

So, as you can see this is only a short list of new UI paradigms that are just around the corner or are ready for development now. I would suggest that as Architects and Developers we should be considering these, and other technologies that I haven't listed, when designing applications so that the best outcome is always achieved.