I have an opportunity to work with some very smart developers. Their code is elegant and their need to solve complex problems is insatiable. But they are typically missing one thing- a user experience that compliments their ingenuity.

For instance, last week I wrote about the Google Apps Marketplace project management platform- Manymoon. Their concepts around updating project members with a loose, social style is pretty inventive. Along with their integration with Google Apps should make it a home run solution. But the user experience just doesn’t compliment it.

Every time I seek to move off of Basecamp I end up going right back to it. It has a lot to do with the experience. It’s just well thought out and I don’t have problems with clients navigating their way around their project site. But UX is not about a clean interface. It’s about knowing why it should be a clean interface and that above all else, ease of use is critical to success.

Think about the ERP systems that run many of our schools and Fortune 500 businesses. They are user-hostile to say the least. One has to be indoctrinated into the engineers way of thinking just to get beyond a simply dashboard screen. Bare in mind, these are multi-million dollar systems.

Maybe UX is just not mainstream enough. Maybe users deal with complexity because they are used to it. Maybe development teams don’t value UX. I have yet to find one answer. But the folks at Manymoon are at least interested in solving their interface and UX challenges. And for that I’m hanging in there with them. The ERP companies… well they are just too far gone.

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