Monthly Archives: July 2014

Why products?

Early adopters might buy tools, consumers buy products. But what about enterprise software?

Apple has proven that well-designed products are loved by their users. Unfortunately, not many companies that build products for the enterprise have embraced high-quality design. At work it is different. Often I ask myself: “Why do we have to ‘learn’ how to use enterprise software?”

As users of enterprise software today have the same expectations for great interfaces in business than they have at home, it will be necessary to produce procucts that are easy, fun, and desirable to use instead of tools that do the job, but which have to be studied before use.

Whitepaper: Industrie 4.0

Usability Design for the industry of tomorrow

Industrie 4.0, the high-tech strategy of the german goverment, is more than the Internet of Things and the linking of machines to cyber-physical systems. The challenge is to develop new business models and services, and therefore also new production processes that aim to make efficient use of the potential that exists from humans and machines working together and to capitalise fully on this partnership.

Work tasks, processes and environments are becoming more flexible. In order to make this a positive economic development, there is a need to integrate future technologies intelligently into operational organisation. This will change the interfaces between humans and machines as well as the interfaces between humans and systems.

Download: Whitepaper in English
Download: Whitepaper in German