Change is relentless, and nowhere is it more prevalent than in the IT sector where Moore’s Law, that processing power doubles every two years holds true to this day over 40 years since it was first defined.

 The corollary of this has been that users have been exposed to increasing sophistication in technology in their daily lives, though with the benefit of being insulated from the underlying complexity.  As a result the user interface has simplified to a point where users expect and demand that tricky combination of flexibility and ease of use – once so often referred to as that difficult term, “user friendly”

 Not so many years ago it is was difficult to define exactly what was meant by ‘user friendly’, to some people , it meant well laid out screens, to others it was a veiled reference to overall processing efficiency and to others, a requirement for accessible user guides. 

 Today it is clear – “can we set users loose on the system with minimal training, safe in the knowledge that they will still be able to process the business and without compromising data integrity?”

 In most cases, systems vendors have recognised this and, through the emergence of common, generally standardised toolkits and guidelines for screen design are now able to develop software which owes a design credit to Microsoft and other truly end-user tools, to the point that at first glance, it is often difficult to tell systems apart without delving deeper into functionality.

 Though this only goes part of the way.  Countless software reviews by trade journals have asked what the main issues with system implementations are and time and again the answer is training; not just the quality of its content and delivery, but also the extent to which it is tailored to combine how the software operates, but in the context of how the finance company requires it to support them. 

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