How Well Does Your Product’s Workflow Work?

We’re all familiar with workflow systems that don’t work. Bad workflow systems cost employees, business partners, and customers efficiency and productivity. But with Web 2.0 principles in mind, there are many ways to create or redesign workflow tools to make them work right. Here are some guiding principles based on many years of experience in workflow design:

• 1. Be User-Aware. Don’t just show a random table of records and force the user to find the right “needle in the haystack” record each time; design the system logic so it knows which records are relevant to each user, and serve these up first.

• 2. Be Event-Aware. Important events, such as approvals, reviews, problems, etc, get lost in the shuffle of tabular design. Events should be bubbled up directly to users in an event/news stream, and these events can then help users perform triage and prioritize their time.

• 3. Be Context-Persistent. Too many systems make users re-find their record-context evey time they switch business activities. Smarter systems let users set and keep a client/record context across activities. They can then clear it and shift context whenever they need to.

• 4. Be Decision-Aware. Old workflow systems keep data separate from supporting intranet/extranet content materials such as powerpoints, how-tos, email steams, etc. Smart workflow systems create visibility from the workflow out to these “decisional” resources, which users can then easily access right at the moment users are making key decisions. 

• 5. Be Attention-Aware. Smart workflow systems use Web 2.0 ui design principles such as staying on the page, inline interactions, expand/collapse tables, rather than forcing the users through a sea of tabs, tables, second windows, pop-ups, and page shifting. These approaches respect the user’s attention and focus, and let them work in a more efficient way.

And remember that even incremental changes in your product’s workflow can greatly improve the end-user experience.