Making enterprise UX less boring

This article is exploring the UX processes and best practices in designing next generation enterprise products.
I always considered myself as a more data driven UX designer but many times I had to focus on making things more “consumer like”. It’s the new trend of “consumerization” of the enterprise software. We see this trend all over the place, from companies like SAP to Google, Microsoft and the rest.
How it all started?
The first company (in my experience) starting this was Google. All products from Gmail, Gdrive, Google Docs, Hangouts etc have a FUN and friendly vibe.


By doing this simple exercise, the once boring products become funnier, more engaging.
Next company adopting this trend in the enterprise oriented products: Atlassian.
We all remember the old days of using Jira and bitbucket… Really ugly and confusing products — at least from my perspective as a designer.
Things have changed now.


The vital role of user research in design
To many people, conducting user research is a bit like cleaning up the garage: they know it would be a good thing to do and would bring some real benefits, yet somehow they never quite get round to it.
For others, user research is something that does happen, but only occasionally, such as at the beginning of a big new project. Then there are those who do carry out some form of user research activity fairly frequently, but who tend to just use the one or two research methods that they have used previously.
Conclusion? USER RESEARCH is important. That’s how you find out your product sucks, doesn’t work or it’s simply ugly.
Sometimes, the little things make the most impact
I would like you to try this little exercise and play with small and subtle graphic elements in your UI, adding more sense and making the interface and the overall experience more human, more consumer like…. It will be such a different experience, trust me.
Some companies started with a small exercise like this and ended up redesigning the product completely using the feedback from this exercise. The results are fantastic. Every employee from any company would love a more consumer-like experience for their tools, to make their life better and making work fun.
This is the end of part I
