Recently, I stumbled upon a blog entry on simplicity written by Eric Burke. Here's the image he used to illustrate the difference between a typical Apple application, a typical Google application, and a typical business application:

Burke's illustration may be a bit exaggerated, but we have all seen poorly designed business applications. The question, then, becomes: Why? Why are business applications typically poorly designed?

I think the main reason for this is that most businesses still don't recognize that investing in usability leads to tangible monetary gains. Better usability means less errors made while using software. Better usability means less time spent fighting the application.

For us, usability and human interface design are imperative. User-friendly design comes first, both when designing administration tools, and when designing the actual business applications.

In future posts, I will explain some of the ways in which we continually improve our human interfaces, and thus, our user experience.