[IxDA Discuss] Thoughts on skinning/customizing enterprise apps?

[Michael Micheletti]

Russell, most of the responses here so far relate to UI skin changes done by
users. There's another type of reskinning or rebranding which is done for a
client or partner behind the scenes. If you prepare your application (say
it's for the "XCorp") so that you can drop in other logos, graphics, and
color scheme so that it looks like it's from the "YCorp" when a user logs in
from there, this is skinning as a benefit for business partners. Whenever
I've built this sort of private branding capability into an application,
it's built goodwill and good business. Partners love it when you do this. If
you design your application to support fairly straightforward private
branding, you're ahead of the game.

At the user end, being able to adjust font size is of benefit and should not
be prevented or broken. Some websites offer a font size adjustment option on
the screen. This assumes that you already do a good job on contrast and
readability, and that the native colors are attractive.

Finally, if you're designing a site for teens, accept that they will see the
ability to have unreadable tiny red letters on a black background as a huge
plus. For them, it's less important that the outcome be attractive than that
the outcome be _theirs_.

Michael Micheletti

On 11/2/06, Wilson, Russell <Russell.Wilson at netqos.com> wrote:
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> [Please voluntarily trim replies to include only relevant quoted
> material.]
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> I am often presented with the idea of skinning or
> providing customizaton for the presentation of our
> enterprise apps.
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> Any thoughts on the real user benefits/value of this?
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>