[Update: 7/24 I met Eileen Martinson through Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur Of The Year Award, when I sat on her interview panel. Well Im happy to report, at this time she won: 2013 Award in the software and IT services category in New Jersey.]
Long before her role as Sparta Systems’ CEO, Eileen Martinson recognized the importance of enterprise application adoption and labels it with highest priority in a mobile strategy plan.
The following outlines some of her most advantageous and fruitful tips.
Human Engineer:
One of Eileen’s game changing tips is having a Human Engineer in charge of User Expeirence (UX), “It is a surprise to many when your head of UX does not know code or design”. Human Engineers study behaviors and habits that are then translated to optimize the enterprise application. Eileen mentions a time she used a Human Engineer team for a clinical application: the UX team observed the end user (doctors and practitioners) from not only the examination room but even into hallways and offices. The main task of the UX team was to observe the end users’ daily habits and pinpointing wasted time with pen/paper, ultimately identifying which features were essential. It ended in a great enterprise application that was highly adopted.
Persona Cards:
I was lucky enough to get a sneak preview of Sparta Systems’ user persona cards, which looks like a mix between a baseball card and a Consumer Reports scorecard. A persona card contains an end users’ picture and even contains the users’ demographics, background story and technical specifications.
Eileen described their use of these persona cards, “When we design we have these personality cards out, that way we can make sure it covers all the needs”. She also put an extreme emphasis on how important it is to utilize each individuals’ strengths cleanly and #MobileFirst. In her experience she has found that simpler features, equates to less training efforts and more adoption. “Increase productivity while reducing training, and it will be a big win for both the CIO and user”.
Video Game Industry:
Consider a comparison between a bloated CRM (or some other cold business software) to the classic game Ms. Pac Man. Which has been adopted more and why? A big key to success from Eileen’s perspective is acquiring knowledge from how games becomes adopted. For example, learning from the video game industry, “…there are no long instructions or training, you hop in front of a controller and start playing; it’s that simple”. Replicating this theory of manual-free behavior drives for a clean and self-intuitive application that results in happier users in less ramp up time.
It would be wise, and my personal recommendation, for one to check out Sparta Systems’ big launches coming out this year, for the latest news check out TrackWise.
