Using a Unified Technology Does Not Mean You Can Have a Single User Interface

Visual LANSA Framework

Using a Unified Technology Does Not Mean You Can Have a Single User Interface

Core Users and Occasional Users require fundamentally different user interfaces, regardless of the technology used to deploy the interface to them. Therefore using a single user interface technology does not necessarily mean you have a single user requirement.

There is a very important difference between the interfaces supplied to Core and Occasional Users which is inherent in the way that they use applications: core users require expert interfaces, whereas occasional Users expect interfaces designed "for the less skilled".

For example, imagine that in an accounting application there is a function called "Create Expense Claim".

Expense claims are created by experts in the accounting department and also in self-service mode by general company employees (e.g. Sales staff, engineers, cleaners, etc).

Would you provide the same functional interface to both the user groups? The likely outcome is that the accounting department would complain about poor productivity and the rest of the company would complain that the interface was too hard to understand.