For me, Google is one of the symbols of simple software design. Therefore, Google developers event is always a good place to get inspired with ideas and new technologies. Google I/O was this week in San Francisco. I had now chance to attend the event, but was able to watch video streaming of keynote and few other sessions. One of the things Google introduced this year was Material Design – a new approach to rethink user experience to make it more natural, consistent and clean. Watch the following video to learn more.
Material design presentation made me think again about how to develop simple PLM experience. The topic isn’t new. I’ve been talking about it already for few years. Remember my presentation almost 3 years ago at AU 2011?
The time of complex and cumbersome enterprise user experience is finally over. Simplicity is an obsessive motto of every enterprise software company these days. However, to develop good UX is a big deal. It requires time and effort. “Don’t make me think” is my favorite quote by Steve Krug about how to develop good UI. How to do so? This is a tricky question. In my view, one of the key elements of this process is to capture elements of well known customer behaviors. You need to learn how people work today. It is extremely hard to change existing user behaviors.
I’ve been reading GrabCAD blog post -BOM Find Numbers: Don’t Get Too Attached. Read the article – it is short and sweet. I’m sure you are familiar with “drawing callout” and find numbers. It was absolutely must feature on paper drawing. Should we keep them in the future? This is a question Ed Lopategui is asking in his post? His conclusion – not really. Here is a passage explaining that:
Find numbers will make little sense in the future, so it’s probably best for everyone if you don’t get too attached to them. There will come a day where the find number is finally retired, and we can move on to the next chapter of BOM management. How can you get to that future faster, you might ask? That’s the easy part: move away from all those outdated BOM authoring tools (like Excel for one), and adopt a modern, integrated BOM editing capability.
I liked BOM find numbers example. New technologies can clearly help us to interlink between BOM and 3D models. It is good to shift away from managing Bill of Materials in Excel spreadsheets. At the same time, maybe we need to think twice and not to kill familiar user behavior and experience? Maybe we can re-use it for the future clean user interface design. Users are familiar with existing experience and it can help them to understand how to use the system.
What is my conclusion? Existing engineering behaviors have long history going back to drawing boards, paper drawing and engineers collaborating live in one room. Digital technologies are ripping off these behaviors. We create digital models and collaborate using internet and computer screens. New ideas and technologies are good. At the same time, it is might be a good idea to learn from existing behaviors and preserve some of them in the way that will simplify digital collaboration and design. It will definition good for user adoption. What to keep and how to combine existing behaviors and technologies? This is a very good question. I’m sure it will inspire PLM innovators for coming years. Just my thoughts…
Best, Oleg
