24
Jun
2011
Research to Development – Fusion Apps Series
by Nitin JainThis post follows our last post about the UI Experience enhancement in the Fusion App Series. Development of any new, ground-breaking product requires a lot of hard work, and never ending pain-staking effort.
Fusion Applications Stack has been a product which Oracle claims it has built right from the ground up. Though they have leveraged the good business principles of the various products, technically it has been built from scratch. Let’s investigate each of the inputs one by one.
Do we know what all has actually gone into creating this so-called, a wonderful, revolutionary, and ground-breaking product from Oracle ?
Let’s investigate the process that Oracle has followed and the results that they have been focussing on during the development cycle of Oracle Fusion Apps.
The product Oracle Fusion Apps has been made with the “customer” in mind (now that’s a refreshing change! What was kept in mind when developing other products ?? 
). Quite obviously, if it’s a customer-centric product, the first thing that would be needed is a very strong interaction with the Customer. Oracle representatives have been doing that very well, by making a large number of visits to the customers who were involved deeply in the Oracle Fusion Apps development from the very beginning.
You would want to interact with the customers more and more when coming out with this type of product. It is said 1,350 usability participants from 20 different industries were considered.
Lulit Bezuayehu, a Principal Usability Engineer with the Oracle Applications UX team who worked on Fusion HCM features says, “We created user profiles based on the site visits that we conducted, and then developed roles to really understand what roles are involved in what activities. During the site visits, we would just sit at the end user’s desk and watch, seeing all the shortcuts and tips and tricks that they’ve come up with to overcome usability issues. We took copies of cheat-sheets and uncovered pain points. It was really interesting and very, very valuable.”
During Customer visits, Oracle formed “Focus Groups” to focus on specific parts of the application to ensure the best solutions, bit by bit, and then integrating them all together.
These visits would make use of personal interviews, feedback sessions, surveys and polls from amongst the candiates to arrive at the best possible solution for the new product. UI, for example, would have a very strong focus on usability.
Another one of the techniques used widely in this research by Oracle was the “eye tracking research”. Typically, the screen we look at is a rectangular object on a computer, or a hand held device. However, we as humans don’t focus on the complete screen all the same. There is a higher focus, for example, towards the left of the screen where we start reading a statement from (We read English from Left to right). Also, we may be inclined to think that there would be a higher focus around the top of the screen, than to the lower portions for the same reasons.
The response to such diligent research has been positive, Bezuayehu said. “In almost every feedback session we’ve done since then with prototypes, customers say, ‘Oh wow, I can’t wait to get my hands on this.’ They’re very eager to actually use the product.”
All said and done, the real litmus test is going to be when the product becomes generally available to the organizations globally, and their real world feedback of them. Ahoy Oracle, better get your Customer Feedback Management systems / software up and working well before that.
To whatever I have leant and seen so far, UI is the only interesting part. Rest just looks like old wine in a new bottle. Only time will tell whether it’s yet another marketing gimmick, or Oracle really has an Ace up its sleeve this time around.
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