This is part 5 in a seven part series from our ePaper - 6 Critical Steps to Adding Mobility to your Control System
The User Interface enables a person to interact with the application. The User Experience is how the user feels after he or she is done using the interface. This is often thought to be the most high profile and exciting step in developing the application. Users and project resources begin to see the result of the hard work and implementation.
Interfaces are best when they are simple. There are countless examples of “flashy” interfaces actually degrading user performance and creating inefficiencies in the use of the application.
Think about the last application you used. Once you were done performing a set of actions, which ones were you happiest about? Were they the ones that helped you finish a task quickly and let you move on to the next task? Or was it the tasks that looked flashiest and had the animations in front of you? In most cases, it was probably the former.
Consistent with our goals from the previous steps, user interface and experience need to ensure that users can consume or create data quickly and efficiently. Anything not contributing to these two factors should be removed from consideration when designing an interface.
