Usability – Making BI easy
The motivating design principle at Yellowfin is to make business intelligence easy. In fact Yellowfin was founded to tackle the problems its founders had experienced with more traditional players in this market. Overwhelmingly, traditional BI products are designed for the technology expert. The perceived functionality requirements are driven by widget wish lists rather than actual business user (the BI consumers) needs.
Our design philosophy has been honed through experience and results in a simple equation: Usability = Simplicity + Unity
We use the following principles when designing our application. These are defined by 5 laws and 5 myths.
The laws:
Simplicity – the art of Zen and interface design
Strive for internal and external unity
Innovation stretchs engineering capability
Everything changes except change itself
First impressions count
The Myths:
Form follows function
Only users know what they want
Involve many people in your design process
Usability testing will ensure a great UI
You can’t live without rigorous design processes
At Yellowfin we use the principles outlined in this paper to continue to deliver innovation, improvements and what we hope is an exceptional software experience for our customers. Find out more>