Directions On User Experience In Manufacturing

User Experience can be defined as "the architecture and interaction models which impact a user's perception of a device or system [...] affecting all aspects of the user’s interaction with the product: how it is perceived, learned, and used." [1].

User Experience is deeply present in all the aspects of our life - kitchen appliances, mobile phones, cars and even buildings - and it makes all the difference in customer choices and user productivity. One needs only to mention the example of the iPod and the iPhone as two hits which differentiated from the competitors mainly at the User Experience level.

There has been historically a gap in the applications usability mainly because on one hand the programmers are inherently technical persons focused primarily in technology, architecture and provision of functionality, and on the other hand users are either poorly represented in the development process, or they find it difficult to express their usability wishes. Together with the advances in technology, User Experience Design has emerged recently as a discipline of its own.

User Experiences comprises several important elements:

• Simplicity
• Beauty
• Elegance
• Balance
• Ergonomy (ease and comfort of use)
• Consistency
• Speed

At the manufacturing level, equipment providers always strived to provide ergonomical user interfaces which represent the physical equipment and its current state. The primary interest was on productivity and on error prevention. The interfaces that run at the local equipment are usually:

• Traditionally rich applications (Winforms, Java applets, ...)
  
• Very specific user interfaces
• One or Two-Tier applications
  
• Not easy to customize or to integrate to/from external applications
  

From a Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) the applications have evolved from pure text terminal screens to graphical rich or web applications. Besides productivity and on error prevention they focus also on consistency, integration, functionality and speed. They typically:

• Provide a fab wide common user interface
• Usually Two or Three-Tier applications
• Traditionally rich applications (highly interactive and functional but not easy to access and deploy) or Web based (low interactivity and lower functionality but very easy to access and customize)

Combining the User Experience requirements from Manufacturing, with a high focus on productivity, error prevention, high-interactivity and expressiveness, data and application integration; with the operational requirements of low cost of deployment and access anytime, from anywhere from any device, we can consider the following three technologies:

1. Rich Client - a rich-functional application running locally, using client technology such as WinForms, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) or other.
2. Web Client - a pure browser application which requires no installation but has limited functionality and lower responsiveness than a Rich Client. Such technologies include PHP, Ajax, Javascript, ASP.Net or other.
3. Rich Internet Application - a type of rich application which runs inside a browser ensuring cross-platform and cross-browser support, and which doesn't require a local installation. Technologies of this type are Adobe AIR and Microsoft Silverlight.
   

The next table makes a short summary of the differences among the three technologies.

The next picture is a screenshot from a Rich Internet Application [2].

As a conclusion to this post, one can say that User Experience is a fundamental dimension in any product or application, which makes a big difference in terms of user satisfaction, productivity and error reduction. While legacy user interfaces will still exist for several years, the author of this post is convinced that the trend over the next few years will consist of:

• User Experience being a more determinant factor in the selection of an application or product
  
• Development teams including a User Experience specialist, which focuses in all relevant aspects of the user interaction
• Application user interfaces taking advantage of new technologies, mainly in the Rich Internet Applications area for its high interactivity, expressiveness, ease of deployment and cross-platform, browser and device support
  

References:
[1] Wikipedia User Experience Design
[2] Patient Journey Silverlight Reference Application