June 8th, 2006
Looking for the Interface of the Future? Ask Nintendo
It seems that if you’re not sick and tired of your enterprise software interface, it’s only because you’re not using it enough. That’s the subtext of endless investments in interface design, new software releases, and countless speeches by industry executives of late, the most recent being a lengthy discourse on software design delivered by SAP’s Hasso Plattner at the company’s Sapphire user conference last month. This is also the subtext to the recent announcement of the joint SAP-Microsoft Duet initiative, which places Office functionality as the front-end to SAP’s MySAP suite, as well as parallel announcements by IBM regarding a similar interface initiative to use Notes and IBM’s portal software as a front-end to SAP, Oracle, and others.
In other words, despite decades of trying and hundreds of millions of R&D dollars, everyone is still looking for the best interface possible for their enterprise software, and the industry as a whole is willing to go through some very complex competitive gyrations (c.f. the coopetition between IBM, Microsoft and SAP) in order to try to get it right.
I have a suggestion that could short-circuit the entire issue: Start developing enterprise software that can use Nintendo’s new Wii controller. The essence of this remarkable device is that it’s a game controller that is both motion sensitive and free-standing, as in wireless. So instead of head’s down pushing buttons, twisting wrists, and other forms of console whacking, you swing or turn or shake or otherwise use your Wii the way you would intuitively do (or try to do) what the game demands. This means that the Wii controller, according to Nintendo, "can be a sword in one game and then a steering wheel for racing games. It’s your paintbrush, your golf club, your airplane" etc. etc.
And, in case you missed the obvious, Nintendo thinks Wii is "your key to unlocking a world of fun you’ve never imagined."
Notice that word: fun. It’s no coincidence that it figures in Plattner’s speech, as in "When we see how much the world is driven by fun, then we should apply this to our commercial products especially in the more abstract world of enterprise systems much more than we do." Imagine work being fun. I think a lot of enterprise software users would be content with "less painful" as a helluva good start. But fun — a little, not too much — would be a genuine advance in the state of the art.
What’s remarkable about Nintendo’s approach, and why everyone in the enterprise software world should at least think about what Wii means for their world, is the rationale behind the product. Nintendo deliberately created Wii to counteract the complexity and heavy nerdfactor design of standard game controllers, which the company wisely saw as potentially chasing away more users than anyone had ever dreamed of. Wii is supposed to be genuinely intuitive, instead of counter-intuitive, and at a minimum appeal to potential customers outside the hyper-testerosterone boys-and-their-toys demographic that dominates the gaming industry today.
One other little tip about how smart the Nintendo designers are. Guess which space-age device the Wii is modeled after? The television remote. Something we all have, we all use, and, for the most part, something we’re all comfortable with. That thinking is behind the recent rush to push Office — home to 500 million semi-comfortable users, according to Microsoft — to be the least-common denominator interface. It’s a good start, but only a start. I would much rather my next enterprise software interface to be a Wii. Why be semi-comfortable when you can be having fun.
Joshua Greenbaum's opinions on enterprise software have annoyed enough vendors that he now checks under the hood of his PC every morning before he boots up. For disclosures of Joshua's industry affiliations, click here.
