Tuesday, October 07, 2014

Bringing Clarity To The Avalanche Part 1 - OOW14

Since the prior post here, I've had some people ask why I compared Oracle OpenWorld this year to an avalanche.  Well, to be honest, there are two reasons.  First, it was certainly an avalanche of news. You can check all the Oracle press releases related to the conference here (warning: it's pages and pages of information).  Second, I'm tired of using the analogy of sipping or drinking from a firehose...time to try something new.

So let's talk about some User Experience highlights from the conference.  Why am I starting with UX?  Because I like it and it's my blog ;)

Alta UI

OK, let's be clear.  Alta is more of a user interface standard than a full UX, as it focuses strictly on UI rather than the entire user experience.  That being said, it's pretty cool.  It's a very clean and simplified look, and applies many lessons learned through Oracle's (separate) UX efforts.  I could blab on and on about Oracle Alta, but you can learn about it for yourself here.

Beacons

We all love gadgets.  I had the opportunity to get a sneak peek at some of the "projects that aren't quite products yet" in the works at the Oracle UX Labs.  Beacons are a big part of that work.  Turns out that the work has already progress beyond mere gadgetry.  The beacons were used to help guide me from station to station within the event space - this booth is ready for you now.  The AppsLab team talks about beacons on a regular basis.  I'm much more sold now on the usefulness to beacon technology than I was before OOW.  This was one of the better applications I've seen at the intersection of Wearables and the Internet of Things.

Simplified UI

I like the concepts behind Simplified UI because well-designed UX drives user acceptance and increases productivity.  Simplified UI was originally introduced for Oracle Cloud Applications back when they were known as Fusion Applications.  But now we're seeing Simplified UI propagating out to other Oracle Applications.  We now see Simplified UI patterns applied to the E-Business Suite, JD Edwards and PeopleSoft.  Different underlying technology for each, but the same look and feel.  Very cool to see the understanding growing within Oracle development that user experience is not only important, but is a value-add product in and of itself.

Simplified UI Rapid Development Kit

Simplified UI is great for Oracle products, but what if I want to extend those products.  Or, even better, what if I want to custom-build products with the same look and feel?  Well, Oracle has made it easy for me to literally steal...in fact, they want me to steal...their secret sauce with the Simplified UI Rapid Development Kit.  Yeah, I'm cheating a bit.  This was actually released before OOW.  But most folks, especially Oracle partners, were unaware prior to the conference.  If I had a nickel for every time I saw a developer's eyes light up over this at OOW, I'd could buy my own yacht and race Larry across San Francisco Bay.  Worth checking out if you haven't already.

Student Cloud

I'll probably get hauled off to the special prison Oracle keeps for people who toy with the limits of their NDA for this, but it's too cool to keep to myself.  I had the opportunity to work hands-on with an early semi-functional prototype of the in-development Student Cloud application for managing Higher Education continuing education students.  The part that's cool:  you can see great UX design throughout the application.  Very few clicks, even fewer icons, a search-based navigation architecture, and very, very simple business processes for very specific use cases.  I can't wait to see and hear reactions when this app rolls out to the Higher Education market.

More cool stuff next post...

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