Jeremy Ashley, Group Vice President of Oracle Applications User Experience
In today’s workplace, professionals consist of a variety of ages, working both on-site and remotely, and with different expectations about how their work applications should perform. This presents a unique challenge for application designers and developers, specifically those focused on HR applications. It is important to consider time, accessibility and simplicity for a successful and smooth transition to modern systems.
New, rapidly evolving emerging technologies are also changing the workplace. Whether it’s a smart watch, cell phone, tablet or laptop, modern systems must not assume that users will adapt to how an application works on a device. Oracle’s research examines all areas of the user experience before designing and developing a user experience that can stretch across generations, expectations, and technologies.
Did you know that by 2020 there will be five different generations in the workplace? What does this mean for your business? It means that not only should you take into consideration the variety of ages and learning preferences during a hiring process, but also the devices they choose to work on. For example, at Oracle, our simplified user interface is the foundation of the Oracle Applications Cloud user experience. We’ve thoughtfully designed the navigation with simplicity in mind, making it easier for employees to connect to other Oracle applications such as Human Capital Management and Enterprise Resource Planning. To help streamline onboarding for new employees, users are able to connect with specific groups that are of interest to them.
Product experts should always make it a priority to understand the end users for whom they are designing the applications. This means a continual commitment to studying, measuring and responding to new application tools. At Oracle, our developers work with user experience architects and designers to ensure that innovation is continuous, and our designs make it all the way into the code of the application. Our team of researchers collects end user feedback constantly on our designs, and studies the feedback for potential improvements and updates.
With such collaboration between developers and designers, Oracle can focus on designing applications for simplicity and mobility, ensuring that the user is able to move across multiple devices with ease. We use a “Glance, Scan, Commit” design philosophy, meaning a user can “glance” at a notification to see if they need to do anything, “scan” for more information about an action or a request, and then “commit” if the task requires the user to complete a task.
For example, your employee might receive a notification on a smartwatch or a smartphone. She can “glance” at the notification and decide whether she needs more information. If there’s something she needs to do right away, she can click into the notification and “scan” for more information, either on the phone or perhaps on a tablet, where a landing page would be designed for that level of information. When she is ready to complete her task, she might be back at the office on a laptop or a desktop, where it is easy to “commit” to completing the task and the full power of the application is at her fingertips.
Due to the variety of needs of an increasingly diverse workforce, incorporating simplicity is not only key to a good user experience and a successful HR application, but also to the success of other business applications. Building a dedicated team, a commitment to ensuring that candidates have a smooth transition into the workplace, and simplicity in the user experience help make the onboarding process for employees user friendly and easy to follow.
See what industry analyst Ventana says about the Oracle HCM Cloud user experience in this recent report here.
