Time/resource allocation on a Stylish vs. Functional user interface

Question

When developing applications how much focus/time do you place on an application’s style vs. functionality. Battleship gray apps drive me insane. On the other hand maximizing a business application’s "style" can tax time and financial resources. Applications need to be appealing to resell or meet basic customer expectations, but defining a healthy medium can be difficult.

• What would you say are reasonable "standards" for allocating develop time/resources should be dedicated to stylizing a business application?
• Is there any quasi-accurate method to justify such items via ROI?

Answer 1

Unless your business application is "Rock Band Enterprise Edition" you should spend no time designing away from battleship gray. There is value in boring consistency.

Answer 2

Try to keep the app very close to the OS defaults, so no special colours or themes. System default colours/styles should be everywhere! Custom icons only when necessary (when there is no other icon that will do).

Further UI styling (fancy colour themes, skins, etc...) should be a separate sub-project and billed accordingly. Some clients will not want or care the extra styling (or want to pay), and some will demand it. For the ones that don't care, just give them OS defaults because once they realize it CAN be customized, they will want more but it's usually too late in the project to do that reasonably (unless you're a killer PM!).

For the ones that demand it, you might want to set up a separate project with the graphics designers, but hold off until the bulk of the functionality is complete. That way, you can just skin the app with the UI that the designer creates. Of course, that assumes that your UI framework is easily skinnable, so if it isn't you might want to look for one (Assuming this is a problem you anticipate).

Answer 3

My opinion is that the first choice is to allocate some time & senior resources to provide technical guidance to find/adapt/create a GUI framework that will help to lower the cost of coding the UI.

Finding the right tool is crucial to match deadlines. However, finding a common platform on which current and future projects can be built on is even a better choice (but needing more time to define & needing to have a clear sight on what will come after)

Designing GUIs is a mix of several skills (ergonomy,styling,programming) , so the team need to have at least some knowledge of all those skills to fullfill both customer functional requirements & also satisfying user experience (which is more ergonomy dependent than style dependent)

Answer 4

If you have customers, then customer service is key to your business objectives. Service starts when application development starts -- by spending more time planning and designing a truly great (beyond "stylish!") user interface and experience, you serve your customers better from the beginning. That investment, far from being draining on financial resources, will make your offerings more stable and are easier to support, resulting in lower costs, a happier and more productive workforce (people like taking pride in the software they create -- can you take pride in a soulless, battleship gray "enterprise" app?), and better customer loyalty.

The question isn't "what 'standard' amount of time must we spend on style," but "can we afford not to give the user's experience our full attention." If you aren't creating really great business apps, you're leaving money on the table for any competitor who is.