Enterprise UX Design in Practice
It’s no secret that delivering excellent Customer Experiences has become a table stake for many businesses. This seems to have led to a noticeable shift in terms of including the Employee Experience and how their interactions with Enterprise Applications could be optimized. Nowadays, Employees have higher expectations of the software they are supposed to work with on a daily basis. Investing in Enterprise UX to improve legacy software can increase productivity, save costs, as well as optimize the overall Customer Experience.
However, an approach based on generic consumer application best practices runs the risk of oversimplification. At its core, Enterprise UX is about dealing with lots and lots of data. Some of it may seem cryptic to you — but not for the people using the software (case in point: you are not your user.) Starting out in such projects, you may become painfully aware of how inept you are to judge the quality of certain concepts at first. This is why continuous User Research efforts are crucial to ensure you identify and solve the right problems.
Continuous User Research efforts are crucial to ensure you identify and solve the right problems.
B2E and B2C UX, compared
There are many advantages to working in the field of Enterprise UX, as well as some differences compared to B2C work.
- Easier access to users
One of the best aspects about these projects is the fact that it can be a lot easier to get in contact and build rapport with users and subject matter experts. - Focus on functionality and problem-solving
One of the best things about working in this field is that the stakeholders are more likely to judge concepts in terms of how they work rather and focus less on visual effects or vanity metrics. - Systems and Service Insights
Enterprise Applications likely have an effect on the end-customer experience (think Customer Support / CRM or inventory management software, for example). Sometimes these systems cast a nondescript shadow over customer-facing UX work that can seem hard to grasp. It can feel like running into an invisible wall at times. As someone deeply curious about investigating end-to-end processes, it’s interesting to see what the other side is like. Knowing about the employee experience and how they perceive interactions with customers, as well as which systems are involved, is key to describe end-to-end processes and discovering opportunities for optimizations.
It is normal to spend some time learning about this whole ecosystem and why things are the way they are.
- Long ramp-up time
Unless you happen to have previous knowledge, learning about highly customized workflows and complex processes require time to gain detailed knowledge in order to grasp concepts. On top of that, you may find that user needs differ based on which role or team you are talking to. Usually, the software has a long legacy of organic growth, usually fixing only the most urgent issues, let alone process optimization. In terms of functionality, it will likely be heavily dependent on backend processes. It is normal to spend some time discovering this whole ecosystem and why things are the way they are (hint: sometimes the answer will be “because we’ve always done it that way”). Furthermore, users often develop their own workarounds or hacks to deal with inefficient interfaces, which is interesting in terms of feature discovery but may take several research deep dives to put it all in perspective.
Users often develop their own workarounds or hacks to deal with inefficient interfaces.
- Some Best Practices don’t work… and some do
Certain workflows or patterns that can be generic best practices may not work or need some adjustment. This also applies to other aspects of UX work, from tweaking Research methodologies to customizing workshops. On another note, people expect certain standards in terms of interface design because it has become the norm in many other parts of their lives (think Google ecosystem) and adhering to state-of-the-art patterns plays a role in terms of cost-saving when onboarding new employees. - Lack of Buy-in or support
Even with an initial investment in Enterprise UX, it can still be a lot of effort to advocate for more buy-in and invest in design activities for Enterprise Applications. This may for example be caused by senior stakeholders who conflate UX and Visual Design. Or simply because the project is perceived as “invisible” to customers. No matter which reason, resources are always scarce, so it’s important to approach tasks with a healthy dose of pragmatism while advocating for growth, especially as a first and only Experience Designer embedded in a Developer Team.
In my experience, Enterprise UX is an interesting and complex field to work in if you have a knack for observing and structuring conversations about complex systems and building connections to the people you build experiences for. If you want to learn more, check out my colleague Jonas’ article (there is also an English Version).
What was your most surprising discovery in this field? I’m curious to learn about your findings. Let me know in the comments!
