While at Adobe MAX 2009, I ask James to give his brain-dump on applying usability and “sexy” design to enterprise applications. While it’s traditionally been a hard sell – evidenced by how terrible most enterprise applications look – several cracks are starting to form in the idea that paying for pretty isn’t worth it for enterprise software.

Here are some highlights and links mentioned:

• Making portals prettier
• James recalls the internal training app T-Mobile demo’ed from an old Adobe MAX. Getting enterprises to make their inward facing applications look better and be more usable.
• Bill Scott’s “Looks Good, Works Well.”
• Adobe buying Omniture – James write-up, my write-up
• We talk about FedEx Critical’s use of internal RIAs as an internal application (see a write-up in this larger coverage of the Adobe MAX keynote).

Disclosure: Adobe is a client and paid travel and hotel for Adobe MAX.