I'm developing a Web application with a client. The users will all be  
internal -- a small group of people, but it's an application they'll  
use all day long.

The client is worried that using anything beyond standard HTML may  
confuse the users because some of them are not very sophisticated in  
their Web use. (Based on my interactions with the users to far, I'm  
not sure this is a problem, but the client does, so it is.)

I'm developing a plan for a survey and a series of customer  
interviews. I want to see what they currently use online and see how  
they react to some things that we are considering for the UI. At this  
point, I think I'll do some interviews, use that information to create  
a survey, then do some more interviews based on all that we learned up  
to that point.

There is some training involved in this application, but they're  
obviously looking to limit the amount that is required. On the other  
hand, it's an application that will be in use for many years, so a few  
minutes of training to introduce some new concepts that save time  
seems like a good investment.

I don't want to use cool features just for the sake of having them,  
but I don't want to create something that's immediately out of date.  
And if we can save time by eliminating page transitions, then I'm all  
for it. (I've always thought that page transitions are one of the  
biggest problems on the Web -- sometimes you forget what you were  
doing by time the page loads.)

And I thought I'd start by asking all you smart folks if you had any  
suggestions while I'm coming up with the plan.

thanks				-- hs


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Hal Shubin
617 489 6595  |  www.user.com

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