Poor recognition of the important role that a Graphical User Interface (GUI) plays in modern software has undermined the take up of enterprise mashup technologies. The latest example I’ve seen is the systemic failure of corporate IT to include GUI design and development tasks in their plans for a new enterprise mashup.

Operational managers recognised that their existing desktop GUI was failing to deliver efficient process support. This forced users to navigate more than a dozen apps in one business process. An enterprise mashup project was identified and initiated to provide a new desktop solution. However no GUI design tasks and no tasks for building the HTML interface were planned. When the project started the developers had no understanding of what they were to build and the business had no way of visualising what the solution would be like to use, consequently four weeks into the project they were three weeks with 75% of the spent budget wasted.

This is not an isolated case. Over the last ten years of designing enterprise mashups I’ve consistently seen the following problems within corporate IT that have undermined the very idea of a mashup:

1. internal corporate IT has no GUI design skills or practice methodology
2. project design and development is outsourced to a IT system integrator that has no GUI design skills or practice methodology
3. issued project plans have no tasks or skilled resources in the areas of GUI design
4. end users are mistakenly thought to have the skills necessary to design their own GUI
5. engineers with HTML/CSS build experience are mistakenly thought to have the skills necessary to design a quality GUI
6. technical pre-sales employees from the mashup software provider are mistakenly thought to have the skills necessary to design a quality GUI
7. little understanding of what a quality GUI actually is: one that supports the end users’ work patterns like a glove and is a joy to use
8. no understanding of the enormity of the opportunity for the business by implementing high quality GUI

Almost everybody is now a power user of the web and this does mean they are more likely to notice issues of poor GUI. However this does not mean they have the credentials to solve these issues.

Now I believe that the answer lies in accepting that this situation is also a product opportunity. There is a need for GUI design guidance and structures to be built-in to enterprise mashup software platforms. Enterprise mashup software needs to transform itself from being an enemy of IT to being a valuable friend. This is possible by addressing the GUI skills gap through the bundling of native standards and strict guidelines.

This opportunity brief is being met by Apple who are demonstrating with iOS app development how to deal with this problem. Now the arrival of the Mac App Store might do the same for their laptops and desktops. Just maybe Apple will provide the next enterprise mashup platform, and resolve the important issue of the GUI?