With that said, here's who & what I've been reading recently on the Web...

I claimed that this happens because enterprise software vendors don't set goals for the learnability and usability of their systems, and because the enterprises themselves don’t hold vendors to high enough standards of application learnability, usability, and efficiency.

In this entry I'll relate some case studies where negative outcomes could have been prevented. I'll also discuss why the factors that contribute to these poor outcomes seem to be persistent.

In the next post, I'll provide examples of how to justify usability for enterprise software, and discuss a model for creating and deploying enterprise software that will result in more positive outcomes.

For enterprise employees who must use the enterprise application, their complexity poses a considerable challenge. When an application is deployed, users are expected to learn the new system, integrate it into their existing work processes, and become proficient enough to allow the organization to realize the system’s full benefits. Far too often, however, enterprise employees find these new systems hard to learn, hard to master, and difficult to integrate into existing processes.

According to the UPA, the goal of World UDay is "to promote the fields of usability engineering and user-centered design. We aim to do this by encouraging, organizing, and sponsoring activities at the local level around the globe, all occurring on November 3, 2005."

More here.