Whether Adobe represents an aging dinosaur in an online world that is quickly passing them by or a force still to be reckoned with in a battle of giants for control of the world of rich Internet application solutions was the central theme of a panel discussion in which I recently participated at the Pacific Crest 13th Annual Global Technology Leadership Forum, in beautiful Vail, Colorado.  The questions asked of the panelists, all of whom represented digital agencies working in the RIA space, were about what you’d expect:  What kinds of projects do you work on?  Is Adobe more or less relevant to your business than they were a year ago?  When not using Adobe’s tools, what else do you use?  Is HTML 5 going to take over the world?  Since the conference attendees were all institutional investors looking to make portfolio decisions across a wide range of technology stocks, what they really wanted to know, of course, was, “Should I buy?  Should I sell?  Just tell me — what should I do?”

The panelists were, probably not surprisingly, mixed in their assessments of ADBE, but the opinions generally fell in line with the type of work that made up the bread and butter of each of the agencies.  Those who specialized in more consumer-facing applications felt that Adobe, although still obviously leading the pack for designers with their Creative Suite, had become far less relevant than they were a year ago in terms of the importance of the Flash platform.  One agency even reported that whereas Flash development represented 25% of their new business in 2010, NONE of their new business in 2011 was being built with Flash; their customers simply preferred to make the trade off of reduced interactivity in exchange for a technology stack (HTML and JavaScript) that can easily be consumed on the iPad and iPhone.

On the other hand, the agencies like Roundarch that focus more on enterprise deployments where a richly interactive experience is key had a different perspective.  Sure, customers are growing in their level of sophistication and better understand that there is a multiplicity of devices to be supported, but these needs are additive to the work on Adobe platforms, not in lieu of it.  More importantly, however, was the recognition of the compelling story that Adobe is now telling with its Customer Experience Management strategy.  For enterprise customers, the ability to tie together a workflow that starts with conceptual and production design and development with the Creative Suite with solid integration into deployment and ongoing content management using CQ5 and ends (or starts again) with usage statistics and analysis with Omniture is terribly attractive.

Let’s face it — if you’re looking at Adobe’s growth opportunity as being centered around their Creative Suite (a mature market with little growth opportunity if there ever was one) or their revenues related to Flash (meager at best), then they just aren’t that interesting from an investment perspective.  But if you look at them with a slightly wider lens — one that is focused on their having finally put together a strong value proposition for the enterprise market backed by an extremely solid product suite — then the outlook for ADBE is a bit more exciting.

Spurred by the success of the Front Office suite of fantasy baseball tools for the 2011 season, Roundarch and Bloomberg Sports have teamed up to release three new mobile apps, just in time for the fantasy baseball trading deadline.

During our first year working with Bloomberg Sports, we designed and developed an online suite of tools and a complementary mobile offering to help advanced fantasy baseball users manage their teams effectively. Beginning with the 2010 NFL season, we broadened the aperture of our fantasy advice to guide a wider range of user types, from novice through advanced players. These efforts resulted in the overwhelming success of the NFL Decision Maker applications, a multi-channel offering supported on NFL.com, and on the iPad and iPhone.

In our second season working together, Roundarch and Bloomberg Sports focused on providing prescriptive answers to key fantasy baseball questions, such as: “Who should I draft?”, “Which free agent should I add to my team?” and “Is this a fair trade?” This focused perspective translates especially well to mobile offerings, which should aim to help users to complete a single task easily and efficiently. For example, the 2011 MLB Draft Kit, released during Spring Training, assists fantasy baseball players with ranking their players before the draft, and quickly identifying their next targets during the draft.

After fantasy baseball players draft their teams in March, they transition their focus from pre-season to in-season tools, such as the Trade Analyzer, Free Agent Finder and Lineup Manager offerings within Front Office 2011. Roundarch leveraged user research to discover the key tasks that users would be interested in completing on mobile devices, and examined the competitive landscape to identify gaps in fantasy provider offerings (i.e., Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball for iPhone) that Bloomberg Sports could address with innovative products. The result of our research, design and development are three new mobile apps: iPad Trade Analyzer, iPhone Trade Analyzer and iPhone Fantasy Scout.

iPad Trade Analyzer

In transitioning the Trade Analyzer from the online toolkit to the iPad, we reintroduced a baseball card metaphor that was an original aspect of the 2010 Front Office product. The user experience and visual design teams worked closely to create a realistic wood surface that serves as the canvas for building trades. While the online toolkit uses text fields and drop-down menus to facilitate player selection, the iPad experience is much more tactile, allowing users to drag-and-drop baseball cards on the table. Recognizing that drag-and-drop can lead to visibility issues on a touchscreen device, we complemented this interaction model with an icon on each card that the user can tap to add or remove the corresponding player to or from the trade.

An arrow at the top of the interface swings in either direction to provide immediate feedback on balanced trades, while a limited control structure offers a clear workflow for analyzing trades (i.e., select a trading partner, select the players on both sides and view the resulting analysis). Given the time-sensitive nature of the fantasy season, the design team identified opportunities to use out-of-the-box controls, while the development team highlighted built-in components that could increase the playfulness of the application (e.g., shaking the iPad to clear the trade, evoking memories of an Etch A Sketch).

iPhone Trade Analyzer

While the iPad and iPhone Trade Analyzers were designs and developed concurrently, the limited screen real estate on the iPhone required streamlining the user workflows even further. Early design concepts supported both landscape and portrait versions; however, we quickly realized that the position of the user’s thumbs while switching between their team and their trading partner was more naturally facilitated in the landscape orientation. The iPhone app maintains the table metaphor from the iPad version, but does not support dragging-and-dropping baseball cards, an interaction model that proved cumbersome during our prototyping stage.

Although screen size dictated that not all iPhone Trade Analyzer components could be displayed simultaneously (e.g., the three elements of the final analysis), we identified interface elements that could be supported on the iPhone and iPad versions with only minor changes, if any. For example, the processes by which users log into the applications and load their fantasy teams are virtually identical across both platforms. By devoting time to supporting a multi-channel strategy during the conceptual design phase, we were able to reduce development time and improve learnability for users that purchased the applications on the iPad and iPhone.

iPhone Fantasy Scout

Complementing the trading apps, the iPhone Fantasy Scout app provides users the ability to identify top free agents across all of the scoring categories in the user’s fantasy league. Starting with the interaction model from the iPhone Draft Kit, we replaced pre-season information such as player outlooks, with breaking news and analysis on every MLB player. Statistical leaderboards, based on year-to-date performance, proved more relevant than pre-season player rankings, although we did elect to include the groundbreaking Fantasy Factors, which spotlight key player attributes, such as injury history and schedule strength, that continue to provide value in-season.

Conclusions

One of our key design tenets was to ensure that the navigation remained consistent both within and across each of the mobile applications. Early feedback has shown that new users have found the interfaces to be intuitive, and easy-to-use, while returning Bloomberg Sports customers are pleased with the applications’ focus on simple, prescriptive guidance. We have designed a user interface model that is flexible enough to apply to future sports (e.g., NBA, NHL) with only minor adjustments, while the development framework can scale to support additional platforms (e.g., Android). As the fantasy baseball trading deadline approaches and users begin to divert their attention to the football season, Roundarch and Bloomberg Sports plan to continue supporting fantasy players looking for the competitive edge, whether at home or on the go.

Each of the in-season mobile applications is available for purchase through the iTunes Store:

• iPad Trade Analyzer
• iPhone Trade Analyzer
• iPhone Fantasy Scout

Roundarch has partnered with ClubCorp, the world leader in private clubs with 150 across the country, to create an entirely new digital experience for the family of property web sites including Braemar Country Club.

The effort included upgrading the quality of all Web sites in the company’s portfolio, making them easier to view, navigate and, most importantly, control content. This power has helped membership director Debbie Faulkner immensely in her task at Braemoor, and it provides a blueprint for any operator whose online presence isn’t yet seen as a major asset in acquiring and retaining members.

ClubCorp’s strategy is to bring the best in marketing and service to the industry—largely by making technology investments.  Their ambitious plan is to digitally enable the entire club experience, everything from becoming a member to monitoring course progress from your smartphone.

By partnering with Roundarch, a leader in digital design and implementation, ClubCorp has redesigned the online offering at ClubCorp.com and at its individual affiliate club sites to meet the demand of potential members, existing members and event planners.

Read the full article here.

Quickly following the success of the first Waters iPad application, the second version of the app is now available in the app store.  The first version contained three Selector Tool capabilities for vials, filters, and plates.  These capabilities allow users to intuitively navigate to the products they need, while providing the sales team with a powerful way to display the Waters brand.

The next generation Waters iPad app includes all the same great features and functionality from the first release, but now includes enhancements and an all new Selectivity Chart capability.  Waters customers and the Waters sales team can use a “map” interface to find and research single or multiple columns.  The Selectivity Chart provides users with the ability to build custom kits, view Waters kits, and then compare the kits side by side.

The second release of the application is a breakthrough for how columns are researched and selected, and will no doubt be a game changer in the scientific community. Selectivity Chart feature highlights include:

• Search for single and multiple columns via guided process or through map navigation
• Pinch and zoom to see additional details
• Build custom kits, view Waters kits, and compare the kits side by side
• Save and send columns (combined with saved list for all capabilities)
• Contextual help for finding the best columns

Additional capabilities for Waters iPad are already being discussed and could be available in 2012.

It is no secret in the Federal Government that focusing on user experience is not a major concern within government information technology programs. In addition, some of its tenets seem on the surface to run counter to conventional wisdom in the acquisition community. Many times, federal agencies face the constraints of the government acquisition environment and thus don’t believe that its programs can have the same look and feel as commercial programs.

However, in Roundarch’s experience as a digital design organization, the techniques and tools of user experience can most definitely be applied in government projects and can be made to fit within federally mandated acquisition practices, regulations and processes. We often find in major government programs there are very large opportunities to improve with a relatively low investment.

Here we address several common concerns that prevent government agencies from embracing user experience for information technology programs.

1. The Government is not selling anything, so user experience is not relevant.

In the private enterprise world, increasing revenue is only one of many quantifiable benefits of user experience. Other benefits that the government can enjoy include increased user adoption of cost-saving self service capabilities, reduced training and support costs, timeline length and risk—resulting mainly from reduced rework and defect resolution. There are many benefits specific to certain missions, such as increased recruiting leads for the military branches, reduced errors in military deployment that require rework and reduced supply chain cost through better visualization of data.

2. The Government actually needs more software developers, not “designers.”

Software programs more often fail not because they have too few developers, but because the developers build something that is inconsistent with the true success criteria for the program. The success of the program is almost always linked to enabling end users in some task, whether that is renting a car, scheduling a medical appointment or adding evidence to a case file. It is the role of the user experience professional to design a site or application focused on those end user needs. This will save development time throughout the project lifecycle.

3. “Iterative prototyping” sounds like it would cause “scope creep.”

Actually, most of the time the opposite is true and through a process of disciplined iterative prototyping scope is more effectively controlled. Sometimes the design team identifies features missing from the requirements that are actually critical to success and would have to be added as rework later in the project lifecycle. Sometimes the team identifies, usually through user testing of clickable prototypes and wireframes, features that add little value. In both cases, because the team is working with visual depictions of the functionality, it is actually easier to recognize when scope changes are introduced and then to facilitate their prioritization.

4. It does not matter because we can “require” our people to use the site/application.

There are relatively few systems for which the government can mandate usage and actually expect it to happen. And even in these situations, when the user experience does not compare well relative to expectations, the cost in backlash can be substantial. In most situations the government launches a new “tool” to replace something that already exists which may be a paper-based process or an online system of an earlier generation. Even if the new application is mandated the conversion will go faster and require less training and help desk support cost if the user base wants to use the new tool because there is something in it for them, like being able to do their jobs easier.

5. How do you ensure compliance with the requirements in the contract?

For most projects the team uses tools such as “requirements traceability matrices” and/or “scope maps” that map the design to the requirements under contract. Because the design documents are visual artifacts, user centered design makes it easier for program managers and delivery resource managers to identify changes or omissions in scope and thus react to them. In other words, the user centered design process and its design artifacts make it easier to manage scope and ensure compliance with the contract.

6. The “look and feel” is the easy part; anyone can do this.

If this is true, why is there so much variation in the quality of user experience among web applications? Any frequent user of the web can attest to the fact that some are uniquely useful and valuable to their users and some are impediments at best. Some of the most disparaged user experiences on the web, both within government and the private sector, were built by large, well-funded organizations who presumably were attempting to put their best foot forward.

7. We must focus on integrating the data.

Many government programs face tough integration challenges. This is often the result of building new technology silos for each information technology acquisition program. We see user experience as a way to address the integration challenges in the government. On the public internet, web applications frequently “mash-up” multiple back-end systems or “services” in a common user experience. This is an increasingly viable model in government as well.

8. We have to comply with Section 508 accessibility requirements, so we are very limited in what we can do on the user interface anyway.

Web development technology is advancing rapidly and it is now possible to implement a very elegant web user experience that is fully accessible. This can even include very advanced Javascript-enabled features that in the past could not be made accessible. It is simply no longer true that Section 508 requirements mean the team must design to a lowest common denominator. There is tremendous flexibility to meet accessibility requirements today and we expect that this trend will only continue forward with future releases of development platforms such as Adobe Flash, Adobe Flex, Microsoft Silverlight and HTML 5

9. We do not have time to do user experience since our delivery timelines are very short.

A user centered design process well executed by skilled professionals, will speed the project, not slow it down. This is especially true once re-work is factored in. When there is no focus on user experience someone still has to design the user interface. So that is generally done by a developer/engineer who is unfamiliar with best practices in interface design and who is not equipped with the right inputs from users to “inform” the design. The person is not using tools specialized to the task or creating the kinds of artifacts that can most easily be tested with end users and reviewed by stakeholders. So the design work happens anyway, but it is just severely handicapped.

10. We require CMMI Level X, so we are getting this level of support already.

The popular CMMI process quality certification does not require skillsets, tools or processes specific to the design of user experience. If a CMMI Level 5 certified software development organization followed its processes but did not incorporate user centered design and specialized user experience skillsets, they are likely to deliver a system that meets the letter of the customer’s requirements but serves users with a subpar experience and thus fails to achieve success.

In Roundarch’s experience with a wide range of private and public sector clients we have found that focusing on User Experience not only delivers better business/mission results, but does so in less time and at lower cost. Moreover – focusing on User Experience reduces the risk of simply missing customer expectations. The iterative, early prototyping and testing inherent in a well-run user interface project ensures that the features are on target with the expectations of stakeholders as well as the very granular needs of each user community. Unfortunately, today very few government information technology acquisitions include User Experience skills in their requirements or evaluation criteria. This represents a tremendous opportunity to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of government and it is one we hope government organizations will avail themselves of.