Designing User Interfaces for Mobile Business Processes using Messaging Application

Abstract

Mobile devices have user interfaces which enable users to interact with each other in an intuitive manner. The most popular applications are voice calls and messaging. In contrast, business communication requires support for long- running interactions between people and automated systems. This makes the use of mobile device for business communication complicated with the existing user interface capabilities. Especially, in cases of mobile device centric processes, intuitive and effective mobile user interface is needed. A mobile business process is sub class of general business processes where user interaction is performed using mobile devices. In this paper, we will describe our experiences in enhancing the existing messaging platform and providing an intuitive way for users to access and interact with business processes. We will describe our approach and a proof-of-concept system with convenient and natural user interface that compares to the other common functionalities of the mobile device. The system consists of four parts: seamlessly integrated way to start new mobile business process instances, ways to check status of existing process instance execution, ways for notifying user on external events within a process, and ways on how users can react on these external events.