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Harold Hambrose is a pioneer in designing business software that seems intuitive.
As the founder and CEO of Electronic Ink, the design consultancy he established in 1990, his mission is to show how electronic business systems can raise productivity, stimulate innovation, and confer a competitive advantage by anticipating the needs of their users.
“Most business systems are needlessly confusing,” he says, “and in most cases their fundamental flaw can be traced to a missing feature—lack of clear communication with their human users.”
Hambrose was a student at Carnegie Mellon University majoring in graphic design when he became interested in the design of digital information. He recognized that the burgeoning software industry was creating features and functions with little concern for how well the finished products fit into the hands of human beings, and after graduation he formed Electronic Ink to promote a closer collaboration between engineering and design. Early in his career he contributed to the design of the first computerized patient record for the Health Systems Group of First Data Corporation, the first ATMs for Citibank Corporation, and the user interface for IBM’s OS/2.
His company has transformed the operations of many Fortune 500 companies by showing them how to design low-cost solutions to some of their most expensive problems. The company’s focus on usability has attracted industry leaders in communications, health care, energy, and finance, and its clients include AT&T, AstraZeneca International, Barclays Bank, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Merrill Lynch, Microsoft, the New York Stock Exchange, QuadraMed Corporation, Rohm and Haas, and the Wharton School.
In addition to serving the needs of a diverse list of clients, Hambrose has led Electronic Ink to receive international recognition by the design community. Most recently, the Museum of Modern Art Department of Architecture and Design requested to feature Electronic Ink’s award-winning 911 Command Center Radio Control Application design in its 2011 Talk to Me exhibition.
Hambrose often lectures in the U.S. and Europe on the importance of the human factor in creating successful business systems. “The opportunities for innovation that we can achieve through information technology are almost beyond imagining,” he says. “But if these innovations are to be meaningful, they must be informed by the everyday needs of the people who use them.”
