Information Age: News, analysis & insight for IT & business leaders

Now that it is a multibillion-dollar company, launching new services every week, it is easy to forget why Google became so popular in the first place. When it first appeared in 1998, every other Internet company was trying to transform itself into a media giant, cluttering their pages with anything that could draw in the attention-deficient surfer. Google did just one thing - search - and did it very well.

Google is now branching into email, video and maps and taking on incumbent web giants Microsoft and Yahoo, but the simplicity of its initial design is still prevalent on its home page. Most of Google.com is blank space, with only a logo, a search box and a few company links. It receives endless praise from web designers for its instant, intuitive usability and fast loading.

The irony is that the iconic site was an accident: co-founder Sergey Brin wanted a page from which to query the revolutionary technology he was coding, but did not know enough HTML to design any more than a minimalist website.

Though that turned out well for Google, it speaks volumes about the gulf between technology and designers. For two decades, the way users interact with a PC has evolved slowly, defined by the operating system on which the applications run - allowing IT managers to ignore the issue of usability.

But now a window of opportunity is opening for user interface designers to make applications and websites easier and more pleasant to use. The first reason is the progression of the web itself. Faster broadband connections and better use of technology such as Ajax (asynchronous JavaScript and HTML) is making even rich, data-intensive web applications as responsive as their desktop counterparts.

Because web applications do not rely on an operating system, it is technically simpler to introduce new features and custom controls. "From an evolutionary standpoint, the web is like the Cambrian period: the point where the [number of] species goes from thousands to millions in a short period of time," says Mason Hale, chief technologist at design agency Frog.

"On the desktop there are a few thousand applications, but on the web there are millions of different user interfaces. It is rich with experimentation."

Windows of opportunity

The second leap forward in user interface (UI) design comes from Microsoft, in the form of Windows Vista, its next-generation operating system (OS). Expected in the second half of 2006, Vista promises "a new design philosophy", says David Weeks, Windows marketing manager at Microsoft UK. Enhancements include reduced flicker and latency in folders and animations, translucent windows, and the ability to see the contents of files without opening them. But it is the completely new features, such as the ability to 'flip'through open windows in '3D' using the mouse's scroll wheel, that promise to revolutionise the way users interact with their PCs. All this is designed to "reduce distraction and streamline work while making windows easier to manage," says Weeks.

At the heart of Vista is the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), which Frog's Hale believes could present the most substantial leap forward in software design of any recent technological development. "The approach Microsoft has taken, to bake a richer user interface into the OS layer, is probably the best model and one you don't see too many other people doing," he says.

WPF will simplify graphical interface design for programmers building Windows applications and so enable greater creativity. But advances are also being made on other platforms beyond Microsoft's. Macromedia's Flex will provide the interactivity of its Flash format, but with better server-side integration, and will work with almost any device or application.

With terabytes of information at their disposal, new ways to help employees cope with information overload are urgently needed; automatically generated graphical data visualisations and dashboards can bring Monday morning reports to life. For CIOs, the benefits of a good user interface stretch much further than increased productivity - it could determine the success or failure of a new application deployment.

A good UI is designed with the end user in mind, and should therefore be intuitive to use. While it might cost more in the testing and design phase, the payoff comes with reduced training and helpdesk queries. While it cannot eliminate barriers to adoption completely, making an application easier to use means employees are more likely to make the required change in their working habits to adopt that new workflow or customer relationship management system.

While designers claim CIOs and technologists in general do not pay sufficient attention to their craft, there are signs that this is changing. Ease of use was the second most popular reason for product selection of business intelligence tools according to the latest OLAP Report, cited by 31% of the independent annual survey's respondents.

Looking outside the organisation, there is an even greater incentive to improve usability. Well-designed customer-facing websites will satisfy the requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act, but also contribute to improved conversion and completed transaction rates.

Research group Forrester found that office equipment retailer Staples increased its online orders by $6 million a month when it de-cluttered the first page of its website. By stripping away unnecessary promotions, navigation controls and order details before customers started shopping, Staples reduced by 73% the number of people who abandoned the page without ordering.

Technology for technology's sake?

But there are pitfalls of which newcomers to user interface design should beware. Innovative sites making use of all the latest technology might generate marketing buzz for a new service, but Forrester analyst Nate Root warns the new capabilities make it easier to "screw things up". Even if progress is made, it is difficult to see the benefits because there are few benchmarks to measure against.

User-centred design Paul Dawson, head of user experience at consultancy and services provider Conchango, says "user-centred design" is a must: "Sit a representative user at the heart of the project and understand where their points of pain are." He recommends creating user personas, formulated by observing users at work or in a lab, help developers think more like end users, and testing with real employees or customers early and often.

Abigail Sellen, a senior researcher in Microsoft's Cambridge laboratory studying the human perspective in computing, adds: "It has to be obvious to the person what that technology is going to do for them and what he or she is going to achieve." Once they are hooked in by one familiar task that could be improved by technology, she says, they can start to learn what new things are possible.

While the technological advances promise the blending of web and desktop interfaces, richer graphics and higher "production values", Sellen hopes for a more fundamental change: "I think we are headed in the direction of more specialised computer systems, designed more with specific tasks and users in mind."

While, in the next five to 10 years, the PC may have a diminished role as more everyday objects become networked and interactive, she also hopes for richer forms of input at the desktop level: "When we use most artefacts we hold them with two hands, but with computers it's like we have one hand tied behind our back."