A blog by Oleg Shilovitsky
Information & Comments about Engineering and Manufacturing Software

How to change existing PLM User Experience

How to change existing PLM User Experience
Oleg
Oleg
26 October, 2015 | 3 min for reading

Historically, PLM products are well know for being complicated and hard to use. It has deep roots in the way enterprise software was built for many years. The assumption that business users will have to use software dictated by IT and needed for their business function. The picture below is a good demonstration for “typical” complex enterprise software application UX:

bad-ui-example

One of the special reasons why PLM products were ridiculously complex is the fact most of them just reflected data management technology built into a product. The famous “flexible data model” paradigm was around PLM for the last 15-20 years. And you can trace the roots of data model in all PLM applications in almost every PLM application today – from very old ones to even modern applications developed for the last 5-10 years. The situation is improving in all verticals of enterprise software. But it is slow and dependent on many constraints – usually PLM vendors stuck between existing products, customers and technical constraints when trying to decide about UX improvements.

plm-ux-improvment

Despite the overall complexity, it can bring results. I reflected on some of them in my earlier blog – PDM & PLM UI Makeup: New trends in user experience.

But, some fundamental paradigm shift required. People like to praise Apple for their focus to design products with a great focus on user experience. My attention caught Business Insider article – Steve Jobs’ reaction to this insult shows why he was such a great CEO. Watch the video – it is very short.

I specially liked the part where Steve Jobs speaks about designing from “user experience” to “technologies” and not backwards. Here is the passage:

…one of the things I’ve always found is that you’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards for the technology”. You can’t start with the technology and try to figure out where you’re going to try to sell it. And I made this mistake probably more than anybody else in this room. And I got the scar tissue to prove it. And I know that it’s the case,” Jobs said. “And as we have tried to come up with a strategy and a vision for Apple, it started with ‘What incredible benefits can we give to the customer? Where can we take the customer?’ Not starting with ‘Let’s sit down with the engineers and figure out what awesome technology we have and then how are we going to market that?’

As I can see most of PLM products are inherited user experience from two technologies – data models and workflows. Although these technologies are absolutely needed to build PLM applications, it gave a very complex experience to users. For the last few years, I can see a significant effort done by PLM developers to improve user experience. Many applications are getting facelift. As an example, we can see more 3D, search driven experience and data visualizations. These are good things to make user experience better.

What is my conclusion? PLM developers should take a deep breadth and ask hard questions about user experience. Most of PLM applications are essentially “giant database browsers” with complex logic. Workflow is a dominant user experience model for process applications. It is a time to think backwards, start from new experience and come with the ideas to existing or new technologies can support it. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Photo credit Udi Waizer SAP presentation

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
10 June, 2013

Big data is one of the biggest hyped buzzwords of the last two years. With all hype around, it is...

5 May, 2017

While PLM vendors are still looking how to differentiate their strategies, PLM software is still crazy expensive. Manufacturing companies will...

27 July, 2010

What do you think about the power of FREE? The following article in UK Guardian made me think again about the power of...

13 July, 2010

The complexity is probably the biggest problem that exists in PLM today. How can we resolve it? Siemens HD PLM...

30 November, 2024

I started my blogging journey back in 2008. In those days, there was huge excitement about the capabilities of platforms...

23 July, 2013

Touch interface is changing the way we work and think. You can see it everywhere these days. Engineers are not...

7 February, 2012

I want to talk about Part Numbers. Yes, Part Numbers, again… My previous blog – Part Numbering and the future...

12 February, 2015

I will taking time off with family next week. It is hard to pull the plug and disconnect from “Beyond...

9 December, 2017

My attention was caught by the following tweet coming from PTC CEO Jim Hepplemann: When I co-founded Windchill nearly 20...

Blogroll

To the top