Applying design principles for enhancing enterprise system usability

Experienced users learn the “tricks of the trade” that allow them to make effective and efficient use of enterprise systems. New users and even experienced ones accessing unfamiliar parts of the system, however, are stymied by the lack of navigational cues, the ubiquity of tabbed pages, and the sheer number of fields that may be required. In earlier work, we documented the usability issues users are facing in the field, derived four design principles for guiding the design of systems that collaborate with their users, and implemented a database framework for supporting those principles. In this paper, we present two interventions targeted at the design principle that calls for providing navigational and progress guidance, while supporting the principle requiring that the system make use of contextual information in presenting data and choices to the user. Using visualizations in conjunction with a playback mechanism, users can learn about system-supported processes, find detailed information on the particular process instances on which they are working, and view automated playbacks of users completing the same and other types of tasks. This paper is the next step in designing enterprise systems that help, rather than hinder, their human partners by sharing their knowledge.