This is the twelfth edition of our weekly BPM 2.0 post. Today, I will try to explain why a web 2.0 user interface matters. Like with any other application, the most difficult part in deploying a business process powered by a BPMS of sorts is in getting active support from end users. For the deployment to succeed, the application has to be actually used by end users, and user interfaces play the most critical role in this.

The problem with user interfaces is that they are not what they look like. A user interface could look ugly and still be a good one, from the standpoint that end-users would like it. End users like user interfaces not because they look sexy, but because it helps them get their job done, better than when using anything else. And when it comes to user productivity, the user interface’s workflow has a lot more impact than the color of its icons.

User interface workflow covers things such as the requirement to install a client application or not, the number of steps required for such an installation, the way end-users get notified when they have to use the user interface in order to achieve a certain task, and the number of steps they have to go through in order to get more information about the task and to get it done. User interfaces for the traditional client-server architecture required the installation of dedicated clients for example. This problem was solved with the emergence of web-based user interfaces, but the use of static HTML significantly increased the number of steps — usually quantified in mouse clicks — a user would have to go through in order to complete certain tasks, sometimes by an order of magnitude or more.

Next-generation user interfaces powered by AJAX technologies and leveraging RSS-type feeds bring together the best of both worlds into a significantly-improved end-user experience. When combined with the right set of server-side process automation technology, they can accomodate both push and pull notification mechanisms, provide dynamic user interfaces with responsive data lookup and drill-down capabilities, and support the complex sequencing of activities that will maximize end-user productivity by removing the need for logging to multiple applications or dealing with multiple individual tasks.

Down the road, Office 2.0 should become the primary user interface for BPM 2.0.