Enterprise 2.0 and UI Design


The term Enterprise 2.0 has become a popular term used to describe the general transformation taking place within the enterprise as companies move towards embracing Web 2.0 technologies and practices.  I mentioned the trend a couple of days ago. The phenomena is actually very simple and very prevalent - what makes sense on the Internet, eventually makes sense in the enterprise - think Enterprise Mashups, Enterprise Widgets, Enterprise Social Networks, Enterprise Video and even Enterprise user-generated content!

Enterprise 2.0 User Interface Design:
More recently companies have gotten around to updating internal (and external) web-based application to incorporate Web 2.0 design and technologies. Here are some of macro and micro trends we have seen or proposed as it relates to enterprise clients:

  • Updating their presentation layers to leverage XHTML/CSS
  • Incorporating AJAX and FLEX components in their UI's
  • Moving away from "Frame-based" design to simpler CSS-inspired skinnable UIs (this CSS Zen Garden for the Enterprise)
  • Adding support for user feedback and user-generated content in the form of rating widgets, user comments and discussions, as well as content upload capabilities
  • Adding support for RSS and other forms of syndication to their applications
  • Mashup that integrate both Internet and enterprise feeds
  • Continued move towards Enterprise "start-pages" (Enterprise dashboards like Netvibe, i.e.) and Enterprise Widget
  • Increased support for Video and other rich media content
  • Mobile application support (especially for the iPhone and Blackberry)
  • Converting from SOAP and WSUI based web service architectures to more modern XML REST and JSON