SaaS UI & Application Design Blog Posts

Remember David Byrne from the rock band Talking Heads? I recently listened to a talk he gave at the Ted conference, on how architecture helped music to evolve. Byrne's premise was eloquently simple. Artists create a style of music that works for the environment in which it will be heard.

Artists evolve musical styles to fit the playback environment

Byrne gives the example how West African music, with its intricate rhythms works outdoors in the open, but would be a disaster in a Gothic cathedral where reverberation would confuse everything. On the other hand, music that works in a Gothic cathedral (long notes, little rhythm) sounds flattened in outdoor environments.

Bach wrote music for playback in a room that was smaller and not as vaulted as a Gothic cathedral. Consequently his work could be more intricate and could change keys without risking large dissonances. His music was an evolution from previous styles, but also something completely new, designed to fit the context of the room.

Opera houses like La Scala, helped evolve yet another kind of music. Two hundred years ago, opera patrons did not listen in hushed silence. Instead they would eat, drink and yell out to people on stage and to each other. The dramatic and repeating melodies of operatic music evolved in response to this opera experience.

Today's music reflects the environment very clearly. Microphones enable soft personal sounds and complex inflections. Pop music is written for the MP3 player, capable of extreme detail but a limited dynamic range (too much dynamics could blow out your eardrums or at least force you to adjust the volume).

All of these examples illustrate the point that the context for playback determines the kinds of music that works and that evolves.

UI Design firms evolve information & tasks to fit the presentation environment

Now love of music aside, why did this all interest me?

Potential clients often approach us about developing mobile apps for the iPhone/Android phones or for the iPad. This is a high growth area for us. Most of these requests are from clients who already provide desktop or Web-based SaaS solutions and now want to scale this experience to a smaller screen and capture a slice of a very fast growing market.

Many UI firms quote the mantra "simplicity, consistency and usability are the keys to great mobile applications". While this is indeed true, it is not sufficient. Like music that evolves to fit its playback context, the user experience must evolve to fit its presentation context. This means looking at what people do in that environment and changing the very nature of the application and UI so that it takes advantage of the context.

Mobile application design as extensions to existing apps, not stand-ins

Good mobile UI design is not just about creating simpler and more streamlined interfaces (such as virtual keyboards that change depending on the kind of data you are entering), it is also about understanding how the context changes what makes for effective activities.

For example, on mobile devices, people are in extreme multi-task mode. The UI design needs to shift from being entirely focused on linear task completion (as in traditional desktop applications), to applications that are easy to enter and exist. They need to keep the user's mental and physical attention by being clear, visually rich and integrating gesture, touch and sound into the interface.

Mobile devices also provide unique behavioral and sense information such as motion and orientation via accelerometers, GPS data (location awareness), and the physicality of gestures. These can be used to refine the experience, anticipate needs and deliver options that are contextually relevant.

The most effective mobile applications act as extensions to existing web or desktop apps, not as stand-ins until the user can get back to a "real" computer.

The music of Mozart was not a stand-in for Gregorian Chants

So back to the David Byrne Ted talk; the music of Mozart was not a stand-in for Gregorian Chants performed in Gothic cathedrals. The musical styles were completely different to take advantage of the unique aspects afforded by the context.

The same is true with user experience design across different devices. The interface enables unique and valuable behaviors that can engage users in completely different ways. Whether it is a fit-in-the-palm-of-your-hand smartphone, a gesture-based tablet like the iPad, an instrument control interface like a fuel gauge, a desktop SaaS application or a speech-recognition-controlled security system, each context offers unique opportunities and the user interface should evolve accordingly.

I’ve written extensively about user experience characteristics that define a successful and profitable SaaS application.  I’ve talked about performance, connectedness, conceptual models, monitoring, on-boarding and the essential requirement to design for the complete customer life cycle.

I’d even argue that the user experience of a SaaS application can be more important to its ultimate profitability then the features provided by the core application. Because the SaaS business model relies on service subscriptions (which are perishable!), continued customer retention is essential for profitability.  Continued customer retention depends on user experience.

This is in contrast to traditional on-premise software. With on-premise software, profitability is defined by the intellectual property of the code and the value that it can command on a per-seat license. The vendor’s goal is to sell as many licensed copies as possible. The list of features is what makes the sale. Once the software is sold, the revenue is recognized. Retention or even long-term use or user satisfaction, is not the primary focus (the 10%-20% maintenance fees traditionally charged by big enterprise on-premise software vendors does not change this focus).

With SaaS, value is defined by the user experience that leads to customer retention and a predictable recurring revenue stream.The engagement process (sign-up, provisioning, social networking), the ease of use, the timed/frequent updates, a focus on high value scenarios, user monitoring, agile pricing, etc. are what engenders sign-ups and retention (i.e. the recurring revenue stream for the application). Modular, reusable UI and mutli-tenant design enable scalability without linearly increasing costs.

This radically alters what defines successful application design.  In on-premise software, the sale of the application license defines the value.  With SaaS, a scalable user experience around the entire customer life cycle defines the value.

This year Catalyst has seen a significant shift in areas of practice and the kinds of applications and interfaces we are engaged to develop. Part of this reflects changes in our own areas of interest, in particular, our work to support and develop sustainability initiatives. But I believe the shifts area reflective a larger move in the industry itself.

Compared to the last several years we have seen dramatic growth in the demand for application design services in sustainability and health care. There has also been continued growth in specific delivery styles of applications, such as SaaS and RIAs.  Desktop apps growth is relatively stable and flat, except in the area of health care, where this is an uptick in growth.  None of this is too surprising.

More interesting has been a rapid surge in interest for mobile application and gesture based interface design, as well as an increase in the requests for instrument control interfaces (perhaps reflecting the growth in embedded processors and remote monitoring).

For my own conceptual understanding of these trends I created color-coded matrix that shows the high growth areas relative to the lower growth areas.  It presents a heatmap-style view of application design trends with red representing hot areas and blue representing cool areas.

Most of the pundits for health care IT concur that a move to electronic records and in particular, a move to a SaaS, will significantly benefit insurance companies, hospitals, and physicians.

Looking at just the most basic factors:

• Insurance companies benefit from the online connectivity of SaaS.
• Hospitals benefit from the economies of scale using standardized data and processes.
• Physicians benefit by not having to operate their own patient management and billing systems.

The business case for moving to secure, SaaS-based solutions is real and compelling. But many health care organizations and service providers hesitate to make the first move, in part because of the magnitude of the transition. Where do you start? How do you undertake the project without creating a bloated, interminably delayed IT nightmare.

The answer is, of course, relatively unique for each company and can be determined as part of an application design evaluation. But one "off-the-shelf" approach is simply to identify processes that move electronic information to paper. In most cases these processes introduce both operational overhead expense and the potential for transcription error.

Eliminating this translation step can offer that first step in the design of a SaaS for healthcare markets. Key to success is to build the application UI using modular, reusable components. Re-usability means that you can take any of your modular elements and plug them into new applications or new screens as you expand your application or services. This lets you add on additional services discretely, in a predictable way, implemented over short time scales.

I had planned to get away without having to write a predictions blog this year, but my topic for this week's blog, turns out to also be a prediction.

I've been meeting with many VC firms, investors, and industry leaders in the Valley and it is readily apparent to me that sustainability is a topic on everyone's mind and and a business opportunity on which many startups and established players will focus over the next 5-10 years.

The motivations are very compelling:

• Energy and commodity costs will continue to increase and companies need to reduce their resource use and waste production to lower costs across internal operations and the connected supply chain. (As one colleague put it: "The days of cutting costs via off-shoring are coming to an end. Resource optimization is the future for achieving cost savings").
• Environmental regulation will certainly increase and companies will need to document, track and report their compliance for emissions and waste reductions (as well as potentially monetize their reduced carbon emissions)
• Consumers are becoming aware of and requesting information on corporate sustainability efforts. Brand value will depend on providing transparency into sustainability initiatives.

Sustainability applications will be SaaS

Clearly, companies (both large and small) are already on the move to decrease large expenditures on in-house projects and software installations with a fifth of all enterprises planning to have no internal IT assets by 2012. Instead the move is to cloud computing and SaaS - with no software to install or maintain or upgrade.

So it is a no-brainer to predict that on-premise solutions for sustainability will be rare. Instead businesses (and consumers) will be looking for SaaS solutions that can be easily accessed by employees from desktops, laptops or smartphones.

Since SaaS is inherently "connected in the cloud", a sustainability service can be effectively designed across organizational boundaries, incorporating the entire extended enterprise - partners, suppliers and customers.

Success depends on much time people devote to use

The other no-brainer is that user experience will make or break these SaaS applications. They key to making sustainability applications work, is how compelling and easy they are for users to enter information, how well they are on-boarded, and how easy it is track the impact (visually including mapping, as well as numerically). The user interface should be designed around a clear conceptual model, high value scenarios with desktop levels of performance using RIAs (Rich Internet Applications).

I'll write more about the sustainability topic in the future, but if you were wondering what the application design crystal ball holds for 2010 (and beyond), think SaaS-based energy and environmental optimization software with a compelling cross-device user interface.

In the article “5 Enterprise Trends to Watch in 2010”,  ReadWriteWeb notes how real-time services are becoming more and more integral to the enterprise, particularly those that hook into business intelligence technologies.

This mirrors our own experience on work with SaaS and RIA projects. Increasingly, the driving force behind our clients wanting to move their business to a Software-as-a-Service model and using Rich Internet Applications, is the need to interact with customers and/or data in real-time, and to respond quickly to competitive opportunities or threats.

For example, our work with 3n targeted the design of an efficient workflow and interface to track and notify people in real-time about emergency situations. Our financial services SaaS work centers around applications and dashboards to dynamically monitor and integrate real-time data streams from diverse sources, and enable predictive, spit-second financial transactions. Our biotech client work is focused on real-time, synchronous collaboration for diagnostics.  Etc. etc.

The key principal here is that SaaS and RIA’s represent a shift in software to real-time. The business enterprise of 2010 needs to be on the web 24/7, interacting with customers and data, responding instantly to changing market conditions and multiple information streams.

While many SaaS services like to explain the value of their SaaS in terms of features (it does X) or cost saving (it is cheaper than on-premise), reality is that these “value propositions” position you as a commodity and are not sustainable. The probability is high that an upstart SaaS firm will soon beat you at your own game (price and features). As an alternative, I’ve made the argument, that a well designed, user validated, SaaS user experience can be an effective and sustainable differentiator between feature-competitive software products.

The value afforded by monitoring

There are several other SaaS value propositions worth exploring. SaaS user interface elements can be designed to monitor user behavior, enabling continual refinement of your service. Monitoring not only provides insight into how the SaaS should be improved to meet changing customer requirements, but also how to proactively reduce customer churn. The value proposition this enables you to offer is: easy to get started and easy to become proficient (and easy to get hooked).

The value afforded by connectedness

“Connectedness” offers another potential SaaS value proposition. In contrast to on-premise applications, SaaS is inherently “connected in the cloud”. Because of this, it can be designed to be more than a data-driven application providing access to end users. It can be designed to incorporate your entire extended enterprise into the business process - offering integration and collaboration services to your customers, partners, and suppliers. With “local” SaaS, the way the end-user interacts with the application should tightly map to the workflow and business objectives of the organization. This same principal applies when you expand your workflow analysis to include broader business objectives across more of your value chain. The value propositions of a SaaS designed to be usable across organizational boundaries are business agility, bottom-line revenue (reduced errors and cost, higher automation), and top-line revenue (improved relationships with partners and customers).

A human resources example

For example if your business is talent management, you can extend the design of your talent management SaaS to bring together internal HR, external recruiters, relocation providers, trainers, etc. This kind of connectedness is a unique and inherent value of SaaS. Beyond the technology, the key to this approach is to define the larger value your solution delivers across the value chain for visibility, control, and real-time collaboration (both upstream and downstream). Then concentrate the design around the high value scenario for those extended relationships, addressing the entire SaaS life cycle.