Why
Case Study
The Real Cost of Not Having Professional UI
Professional UI will add up to cost savings in the long-run.
A client hired me a while back after attempting to build their web user interfaces using their backend coding team. Initially their reasoning was, “Why do we need to spend the extra money on a front-end person? Our Java guys can handle the UI. It’s just HTML.”
That kind of reasoning worked about a decade ago, but it doesn’t work today. Front-end UI has made dramatic strides in technologies in recent years, to the point where there are now specialists in the field.
In the case of this company, their Java guys had no experience in graphic design or design tools; no experience in business communication; and their CSS and JavaScript skills were inadequate for building DHTML that was cross-browser compatible.
The Java team was good, but today’s UI is specialized. What this project required was simply a new set of skills the Java team didn’t have time to master.
Once the project manager started to see the end result, the misaligned interfaces, how the pages rendered differently between browsers, the “klunky” way the interfaces responded, and how “ugly” the screens looked, he knew they needed someone to make it look and function much more professionally.
That’s when they hired me.
A WebTiger to the Rescue
I call UI people like me WebTigers. We are multi-skilled, multi-talented front-end engineers capable of taking a project from concept design, to wireframe, to graphic design, to fully functional front-end product. We can handle everything on the front-end while the Java or .NET engineers can spend their valuable time on important backend functionality.
A real UI pro can save your team and company a lot of time and money not only in the cost of revisions of the project’s design, but also in streamlining the UI workflow, creating a more professional end-user experience and by producing UI code that is much more extensible and modifiable later.
Better Code Now. Easier Updates Later.
The project manager was very pleased with the end result after a they brought me in to upgrade the application’s UI. I introduced a number of UI technologies that allowed them to create a more stable, extensible, functionally agile, and not to mention better looking, product.
Exceptional UI is not just about pretty graphics, it’s about workflows and what the end-user experiences while using a web -based interface. It’s about cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility and ease of doing updates and revisions later. It’s about building Web 2.0 products that function more like applications than old-style static web pages.
In the long run, a top-notch UI consultant can save you a lot of time and money in developing a product that your clients and customers will be happy with and impressed to use.