Today, PeopleSoft is the world's second largest enterprise application provider, with $2.8 billion in annual revenues, $1.6 billion in investments and cash, 12,000 employees, and more than 12,100 customers in more than 25 industries in 150 countries. The visionary innovation that made PeopleSoft an industry leader continues to fuel its expansion into new technologies, new markets, and new industries. See the bottom of this page for an overview of PeopleSoft’s product families.

Over fifty employees make up the User Experience Team at PeopleSoft. Their work helps ensure that PeopleSoft develops useful and user-friendly applications by providing support through usability testing, interaction design, information architecture, standards, and many other services.

During usability testing, a user performs predefined tasks in a controlled laboratory environment while usability specialists observe and record their actions to identify potential usability issues associated with a product. The goals are to determine if users can perform the tasks easily and if they are satisfied with the interface, functionality, and workflow of the product tested. 

Tasks and events are logged with The Observer Video-Pro. Normally, a usability engineer is paired with a logger to enter data. The logger’s task is to identify mouse clicks, assists, and enter comments provided by the participant and from observations of the participant’s behavior. Data is exported to our homegrown analysis program to compile task completion times, error rates, etc. We use Camtasia to prepare video clips when necessary.

PeopleSoft maintains six permanent and one remote usability lab. Two of the permanent labs have three rooms (Participant, Tester, & Observation). This creates an effective testing environment with a minimum of intrusion. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Floorplan of a 3-room usability lab with separate rooms for participant (top), tester (middle) and observers (bottom). The participant room shows a simulated office environment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Floorplan of a 3-room lab with separate rooms for participants (top), tester (middle) and observers (bottom). The participant room is suitable for focus group sessions as well as usability testing (e.g. groupware applications). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Participant room. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Control room with video recording and data collection equipment. 

 

 

 

 

 

Observation room for multiple observers. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Among the tools used by our usability professionals is also a portable usability lab manufactured by Noldus Information Technology. The lid of the portable lab, holds two small LCD panels, one (left) with the screen capture of the user’s computer, and one (right) with the close-up view of the user. These two signals are mixed in a picture-in-picture image, recorded on the compact VCR in the bottom of the case. To the left is a laptop computer running The Observer Video-Pro logging software.

When PeopleSoft acquired J.D. Edwards, three product families were created: PeopleSoft® Enterprise, PeopleSoft® EnterpriseOne, and PeopleSoft® World. 

PeopleSoft Enterprise
PeopleSoft Enterprise is a family of best-in-class applications based on Pure Internet Architecture® designed for flexible configuration and open, multi-vendor integration. It is ideally suited for financial, government, education, healthcare, and other services industries. It is also ideally suited for large, company-wide functions such as human resources, finance, IT, procurement, marketing, services and sales across all industries.

• Integrated, best-in-class applications. 
• Ideally suited for financial, government, education, healthcare and other services industries. Also ideally suited for large company-wide functions (HR, finance, procurement, etc.) across all industries. 
• Industry-specific functionality. 
• Highly configurable and flexible.
• Strong multi-vendor integration capabilities.
• Broad choice of platforms.
• Real-time, Pure Internet Architecture®.
• Industry-leading Total Ownership Experience: superior usability and automation of people intensive implementation and maintenance tasks.

PeopleSoft EnterpriseOne
PeopleSoft EnterpriseOne is a complete suite of modular, pre-integrated industry-specific business applications designed for rapid deployment and ease of administration on a pure internet architecture. It is ideally suited for organizations that manufacture, construct, distribute, service, or manage products or physical assets. 

• Complete suite of modular, pre-integrated applications (single database, pre-bundled) designed for rapid deployment and ease of administration. 
• Ideally suited for organizations that manufacture, construct, distribute, service or manage products or physical assets.
• Industry-specific functionality. 
• Configurable to customer-specific business processes.
• Offers scalability and flexibility to support growing operations.
• Broad choice of platforms.
• Real-time, pure internet architecture.
• Industry leading Total Ownership Experience: superior usability and automation of people-intensive implementation and maintenance tasks.

PeopleSoft World
PeopleSoft World is a leading application suite for the IBM iSeries platform. The applications are tightly integrated and pre-bundled on a single database, with a Web-enabled architecture. 

• World-leading application suite for the IBM iSeries platform. 
• Focused on manufacturing, distribution, and asset-intensive industries.
• Tightly integrated and pre-bundled on a single database. 
• Host-centric, web-enabled architecture.

PeopleSoft Inc.
User Experience Team
4480 Hacienda Drive
Pleasanton, CA 94588
U.S.A.
URL: www.peoplesoft.com