User Interface Engineering

Over the years we’ve heard lots of different ideas about what web applications are and what they do. Here’s a quick summary of the most popular ones…

• You enable two-way communication
  A web application is, above all, enables two-way communication with users. It’s a conversation between a user (or users) and the web app, with the web app presenting a series of interaction possibilities and the user interacting with them. This is in contrast to a one-way, read-only experience where the user sits passively by simply reading information. In web apps, reading is only half the conversation. Listening to, processing, and saving information is the other half.
• You have HTML forms
  Some folks equate an HTML form element with web applications. If users are submitting or changing information with an HTML form, then they’re using a web app. This is similar to a two-way conversation: if you have a form then users can talk back to you. If they’re simply browsing around without submitting anything, it’s probably more of a site than an application.
• You think in screens instead of pages
  Like desktop applications, web applications are built out of screens instead of pages. Screens are different from pages in that they serve to handle some sort of transaction, generally following interaction design principles (e.g. show system status and provide feedback) in addition to graphic design principles. This, of course, didn’t stop people from building apps out of pages, but the swiftness with which we’re moving to AJAXified apps suggests just how inelegant the page model is for interaction.
• You have user accounts
  One of the traits of web applications is that they have user accounts. This is necessary to save personal information such as order history, preferences, and bookmarks as well as provide authentication for accessing personal data. Online banking, blogging tools, and your favorite photo sharing site would be impossible without them.
• Your interface is your product
  Most web sites exist to do one of two things: advertise something or display unique content. In these cases the web site itself is not the product: the product is only revealed in some way through the interface. In web applications, on the other hand, the interface is the product. The interface is the customer-facing artifact through which users get value and communicate with the organization. Some companies, such as Amazon and Netflix, rely solely on the application to deal with customers. Each of these companies wouldn’t exist without their web application doing the work.

(If you’re thinking about attending our Web App Summit in Monterey, California this January, and are having trouble convincing someone that you’re working on a bona-fide web application, this list is for you!)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 24th, 2006 at 11:06 am and is filed under Events, Web Applications . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.