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

Here is a round up of some interesting UI related blog posts that have come out in the last couple of weeks:

• Cisco’s new CTO comments on the importance of user interface design
  More and more companies (including Cisco) are becoming aware of the important of good user interface design. Cisco’s new CTO, Padmasree Warrior, tells why.
• Three cell services you’ll love to call
  Having worked with companies like Voxify, Jacent, Bevocal and Nuance in the past we have a lot of experience (and appreciation for) good VUI design. For those who don’t know VUI stands for Voice User Interface (think GUI for voice). This post looks at new voice services from Google’s (Free 411), ChaCha and Jott.
• Hacking The Facebook Platform For Data Portability
  Great article on TechCrunch on the inner workings of the Facebook platform. Provides a great overview of FB’s data structure, privacy and terms of service, and important integration touch points.
• 23+ Impressive Tools for Faster Javascript/Ajax Development
  Round up of useful Javascript tools and services that can come in handy if you do any Javascript development.

Thumbs Ups or Thumbs Down
Most sites that use or reply on user-generated content, provide mechanisms for “content consumers” to rate the content. The idea is that community members can vote or rate content, thus allowing the content with the highest rating to rise to the top.  From a UI perspective, there are a number of different ways to do this! Traditionally, many sites had made use of the popular 5-star rating system. These first appeared on video sites like Netflix and Blockbuster but very quickly became wide spread.

When Stars Don’t Always Work
Stars are great when it comes to comparing two items of “known quality” – two movies for example. This approach works well for movies, videos, DVDs and the like. When it comes to searching for popular user generated content, however, figuring out what is or is not popular based on stars alone is limiting. In a 5 star system, it is difficult to find the “most popular” content because is unrealistic to sort content by stars alone (too many items have the same number of stars).  Incorporating the number of users rating the content into the equation doesn’t always work (which is more popular – a 2 star item rated 20 times, or a 5 star item rated 2 times?).

Voting vs. Rating
Say hello to thumbs up and/or thumbs down voting. Voting simplifies the process of measuring popularity (simply add up the number of votes).  True, voting can turn the rating process into a popularity contest but isn’t that what user generated content is all about? As long as safe guards are put in place to prevent abuse, voting usually represents the most simple (and perhaps the most accurate way) of measuring the popularity of content.

So the trick to using rating and voting widgets, is knowing when to use which! In situations where items lend themselves to objective comparison, or whose features are well defined and understood (movies, cars, consumer electronics, i.e.), rating may be the way to go. In situations where comparisons are more subjective or items are difficult to compare, voting systems tend to work best.