No matter how you cut it, an assembly of displays presenting data and application features represents a product. As a product, SaaS (Software as a Service) applications possess a certain physical form that either enhances or inhibits a human end user’s ability to perform a certain task.

A SaaS product is a piece of software that end users purchase access to, rather than purchase to install on their computer. A wildly successful example is Salesforce.com-a software tool that allows a company’s sales professionals access to Saleforces’ features and functions, and the company’s own sales data wherever there is an internet connection. This means salespeople who are on the road most of the time can update the company’s sales data real-time from the road. It also means that the company no longer has to wrestle with software upgrades and data integrity issues related to individual physical computers (e.g., salespeople updating files once they are back in the office).

“We’re running a SaaS model now, so changing the product’s user interface is a snap. We can change it every day if we need to. So we don’t have to worry about usability problems anymore.”

This evolutionary quality is a welcome change for software companies whose previous product release schedules were plagued by missed release dates and grandiose unveilings that often disappointed customers. SaaS applications can be updated incrementally and deliver new features and user interface designs to end users whenever they log in. This capability has given some folks in the SaaS world the impression that these products are immune from the usability and user adoption problems that plagued their browser-based and client-server predecessors. Unless design and design process drive the evolutionary changes of products, changes may keep genuine innovation and improvement from being a reality in this new world.

Once again, it sounds like a new technological capability is being mistaken for design and design process-things that are painfully rare in the software world.