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Last week I had an intense realization around the fate of E2 adoption - in a toy store.

Upon entering the store, my adult facade fell away and I stood wide-eyed, glancing in anticipation at all of the toys I would be able to play with.  Out of all the options available I reached out and picked up a traditional teddybear.  The experience was magical.

I was entirely engaged, focused tightly on my experience.  Then it hit me - why don't most technologies have this same effect?

Collaboration is Tactile

As a technologist, it is easy to get caught up in the bits and bytes of our world.  Reveling in sophisticated capabilities to manage taxonomies, manage the full life cycle of content and integrate with the latest standards.

Great End User Experience is a Prerequisite for Sucess

Ultimately collaborative success is about experience.  I propose that a system less capability, but with pleasant usability will always triumph in adoption over a more capable, but overly engineered user experience.

Tenets of Tactile Collaboration

• We do not care what is inside of it, as long as it doesn't break
• We do not care where a component of the solution is has been built, as long as it is works properly
• Pleasant look and feel is engaging, rough or poor design is off putting

Key Takeaway
We must remind ourserlves that adoption has nothing to do with technology.  It is about the experience it generates.  The less cryptic a system is to engage with, the higher the level of potential engagement from your intended audience.

When rolling out enterprise 2.0 solutions in your organization, consider the number of mouse clicks to perform an action, ambiguity of buttons and other design elements competing for a user's attention.  User experience is an intricate discipline within its own right, but taking a quick pulse on common sense design decisions will yield tremendous benefit on adoption and a return on enterprise 2.0 technology for your organization.