Have you ever heard anyone debate the merits of software sexiness and user-friendliness?  I'd always thought they were virtues on par with showering daily and being nice to your mother, but apparently I was mistaken.  I got a good chuckle out of a debate going on recently about whether enterprise software should be sexy and easy to use or not.  You don't get to poke fun at people arguing for a flat earth or horse-drawn carriages too often, so I just can't resist the urge to join in the fun.

It all started with Bill Gates complaining that bloggers don't write about enterprise software often, instead focusing on consumer software.  Robert Scoble correctly pointed out that enterprise software is generally unsexy and therefore people just aren't that interested in it.  I would add that it's generally not very innovative either.  Innovation tends to flow from consumer software to business software, not vice versa.

So Scoble asks what we can do to make enterprise software sexier.  In response to the question, which any enterprise software company which values self-preservation should be asking itself anyways, ZDNet's Michael Krigsman responds with a sharp "Scoble’s question is irrelevant and meaningless."  We should all be thankful Krigsman is not a school teacher.  Anyway, he goes on to state:

"Robert Scoble misses this point: unlike consumer software, where sex appeal is critical to attracting a commercially-viable audience, enterprise software has a different set of goals."

I'll save you the trouble of reading the post and tell you that his point is that enterprise software is to be stable, above all else, sacrificing the user if need be.  While I can see his point, this doesn't negate the fact that humans actually have to use it, and so if customer satisfaction is a goal (I know it's a HUGE one at Cisco), your software had better be pleasant to use.  And if you actually want to sell MORE software, your software had better have some sex appeal.  This is 2007, Mike--Apple and Web 2.0 are kind of big deals these days.  People like their iPods.  We were laser-focused on the user experience at Latigent, and it's a big reason why we were so successful.

So then Nick Carr, always a good read, chimed in and correctly pointed out that design and functionality are NOT mutually exclusive goals.  Seems like a no-brainer to me.  But Krigman, champion of green-screen and mainframe applications everywhere, is back on the scene to accuse Nick Carr of living in Fantasyland (I'll bet Mike's a hit at parties), saying that priorities, legacy support requirements, product cycle times, and technology limitations prevent enterprise software from being friendly.

And then it gets really funny, as people involved in developing (presumably ugly) enterprise software jump to Mike's defense:

• "it's just a matter of how you look at it, as Vinnie and Anshu say "beauty and sexiness is in the eye of the beholder" and you know what I too am damn proud to be lumped into this one." - Craig Cmehill
• "Yes, consumers get turned on looking at a map overlayed with restaurant locations but my enterprise customers want to see real value." - Anshu Sharma
• "You see, many average joes like Scoble are drawing a long-term assumption, and that is that enterprise software is going to converge with where consumer software is right now and where it is going." - Jevon MacDonald  (Apologies to Jevon, he pointed out that he wasn't actually agreeing with Mike, and after re-reading his post I have to agree.)

I think what we have here is a case of people thinking inside the box.  Wrapped in foam, surrounded by packing peanuts, with no chance of any exposure to the world outside their bubble.  I get the sense that these guys have built enterprise software before, and they didn't get the best feedback on it from end-users, and are a tad defensive.  You see, the key here is:

End-users are also consumers

It all comes down to priorities.  If you make user experience a PRIORITY, and spend some time actually WORKING ON IT, and THINKING ABOUT IT, it will probably turn out OK.  If you let programmers design the interface, it will just make sense to the programmer.  And most programmers are not the most aesthetically-oriented guys.  Being a programmer myself, I learned that a long time ago.  If I just run off and build something that makes sense to me, there is absolutely NO guarantee that it will make sense to anyone else.  In fact it probably won't.  I've learned to live with it.

But fixing that is anything that requires focus groups and design gurus to implement, either.  All you really need is good communication between the people building the system and <gasp> the sales department.  You know, the people who are going to show the product off to the customers who buy it.  They generally have their fingers on the pulse of the people they're selling to, and they're usually not too technically inclined (which is a GOOD thing when you're talking about designing interfaces).  If I scribble a mockup of a screen on a whiteboard and their eyes glaze over, I know that I'd better rethink that screen or be prepared to A) document it well B) train people on it and C) hear complaints about it for years.  It's probably easier just to erase it and try something else.  Better yet, get some key customers involved.  That way you'll know that you have at least ONE customer happy with the end result.

It's amazing to see how much effort some people will go to in order to defend something that obviously can't be defended.  A little internal communication would go a long way in preventing these types of situations.