Enterprise application design: A goldmine for UX designers
It is often underrated but of immense value for the career growth of a UX designer by expanding the view.
Enterprise applications are large-scale industrial software solutions built to help organizations manage their internal operations. ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), CRM (Customer Relationship Management), SCM (Supply Chain Management), HR systems, and patient management systems in healthcare etc are all Enterprise Applications.
This is a special breed of software that crunches the data, powers the essentials that the world runs on, hiding and working in its own quiet space. It is not glossy and glamorous. It may even look repetitive and boring. But it runs banks, hospitals, airports, factories, insurance giants, and more.
For UX designers, it is a different world where infinite strategic design opportunities can be found — more complex, less flashy, more technical, but way more impactful. Let’s dive in.
Steps in building enterprise applications
Most prominently, they need the following:
- Stakeholder alignment: Multiple departments, such as operations, finance, IT, compliance, legal, and more, need to come together to form a chain of processes that moves data from one end to the other.
- Requirements gathering: This answers questions like — what all do we need to get done? What are the priorities, which rules should be followed, what are those business-specific processes and their expected outcomes, and many more. Documenting all of these discoveries. This also includes knowing as many details of the target audience within the form of multiple personas.
- Technical architecture planning: Scalability, security, integration, performance
- Development cycles: Agile sprints or waterfall methods depending on the org’s maturity.
- Change management: Training, documentation, onboarding, support.
- Testing and quality checks: This makes it error-proof by testing against real-life scenarios and edge cases.
These are complex, interwoven steps generated from intricate business processes specific to each business. They run iterative improvement cycles through various stages as implementation reveals actual on-ground feedback. They take quite a lot of time to shape and evolve over years, with heavy investments and a long roadmap.
That makes its UX Design complex too!
Enterprise UX is a practice of designing user experiences specifically for enterprise software users — most commonly, the employees, but at times the general public too, as users.
Designing one is less about trends and more about task flows, system feedback, and business goals. It focuses on enabling users to complete high-stakes, often repetitive, work with minimal friction and maximum efficiency and accuracy.
For example, a claims processor at an insurance company might use an app eight hours a day. If that tool is clunky, it increases frustration, errors, and even business loss. Enterprise UX ensures that the software supports — not blocks — these real-world workflows.
How is enterprise UX different from consumer UX?
One of the biggest differences is that the person using the software isn’t the one who buys it. Someone else chooses it for the employees so that they can perform the necessary business-specific tasks in their daily jobs. These are the complex work applications, whereas consumer applications are chosen by the users to spend time on. These are not technically super-charged and not filled with an enormous number of tasks for the users. In fact, these are deliberately made relatively a lot simpler, fun, and full of colors and images.
This underlines specific design considerations and challenges while building an enterprise application, which makes its approach unique from that for consumer UX. Let’s see some of the the typical differentiating factors:
Audience: Enterprise UX has internal trained users, and Consumer UX has the general public as users.
Tasks: Enterprise UX deals with Complex, repetitive, and data-heavy tasks, whereas Consumer UX’s tasks are lightweight, goal-driven so that they can appeal to the masses.
Interface: Enterprise UX has plenty of dense, utilitarian, interactive screens since they need to follow the business logic and specific processes in a certain way, whereas Consumer UX has clean, minimal, trendy interaction pattern that needs to appeal to by and large everyone.
Feedback loops: Enterprise UX gets information and feedback from the field visits, stakeholder interviews, etc, whereas the Consumer UX needs user reviews, analytics, etc, to gauge the sentiments and success rates for the app.
Real-life challenges in designing enterprise UX
Let’s not sugarcoat it. Enterprise UX comes with its beasts:
a. Old generation legacy systems
Many enterprise tools are built on decades-old tech. You’re not starting from a blank canvas — you’re painting over ancient murals. But there is a much brighter future for the newer tech to get incorporated — all thanks to the rapidly changing technological landscape like AI and other emerging tech. The industry wants to leverage newer tech.
b. Access to users
Every user is busy doing their daily jobs with strict deadlines. Getting their time to ask them questions, getting feedback on your thoughts and designs is often very tricky and difficult to achieve. Their work could be confidential or regulated.
c. Complex workflows
Users aren’t just clicking a button — they’re processing transactions, managing compliance, cross-referencing databases, and doing much more. A deep understanding of the business logic and workflows is the most essential requirement. It needs a bit of patience to dive into learning unknown domains and readiness towards adopting new technology.
d. Internal politics
Multiple stakeholders, conflicting priorities, and siloed teams. You often need to balance design best practices with business constraints. One needs to understand the internal business dynamics that may not be written anywhere but are essential to sustain and survive!
e. Resistance to change
Users may be comfortable and settled with existing systems, however clunky — even if they’re inefficient. Change brings fear. It needs a lot of effort to gain users’ confidence. It needs to build trust. Adapting to a new environment may often feel stressful and time-consuming for the users. They need to see value. All of this means a lesser inclination to accept the new designs. It can sometimes be very challenging for a UX designer.
Opportunities in the future of enterprise UX
Despite the challenges, Enterprise UX is continuously on the rise.
- Digital transformation is no longer optional — enterprises are forced to modernize. With the ever-changing pace of technological advancements, enterprises are adopting newer concepts like AI.
- Design maturity is growing — more enterprise teams now understand the importance of a good User Experience design. They are no longer in a developer-dominant world.
- AI and automation open doors to simplify and accelerate workflows. Enterprises are convinced that newer technology would bring better results in their pursuit of success. Hence, they are more open to talking and experimenting.
- Design systems are being adopted even in legacy environments, bringing consistency and industry standards. Enterprises are welcoming UX designers to make the best-in-the-market solutions.
- Remote collaboration tools are in demand — thanks to hybrid work.
An unthinkable number of opportunities await any UX designer that is ready to learn the tricks of the trade- not only from UX design methodology but also from building interpersonal communication within a corporate world.
How can UX designers make an incredible impact
If you’re ready to explore Enterprise UX, here are some tips and hacks you can employ:
a. Learn to speak business language
UX designers need to be on the product team, asking questions proactively. Understand the goals behind the initiative and, objectives of the business. Ask: Why is the company investing in this tool? What KPIs does it drive? What is the business outcome? Read business strategy documents. Learn to speak their language, such as ROI, operational efficiency, compliance, and SLA. Try to understand what they value more.
b. Master complex user journeys
Forget happy paths. Befriend edge cases. Observe more. Go out there in their real working conditions to see how they deal with situations. Understand alternative possibilities. You need to map real-world workflows: approvals, escalations, exceptions, and parallel tasks. Use journey maps, swimlane diagrams, and process flows. In short, embrace a more strategic way of thinking, even though it is not always fun!
c. Be prepared for interviews
Enterprise users are busy and often not vocal. You need to read between the lines. Shadow them. Watch how they work. Note down workarounds. Whenever you go to talk to them or ask something, go with an agenda. Prepare yourself ahead of time and give them a complete idea of what they should expect in the conversation. Remember: they are always short on time, and most of the time, they insist on that being valued.
The users would not initiate any topic or start providing information on their own. You would need to ask the right questions and get their answers for you. Going prepared is very important.
d. Be a cross-functional collaborator
You’ll work with business analysts, developers, product owners, QA, and support teams. Collaboration is your superpower. Be a team player.
e. Build for efficiency, not just delight
Design for fast data entry, bulk actions, keyboard shortcuts, and error prevention. Think: speed, accuracy, accessibility. Try to get into their minds to feel empathetic about their gruelling tasks and try to work out the best solution for easing their workload.
f. Learn the tech
Knowing the platform — SAP, Salesforce, Oracle, custom JavaScript frameworks — helps you design within constraints. It even helps to know some developer lingo, too!
g. Document, document, document!
In enterprises, your wireframes are often reviewed by 5+ departments. Clarity in documentation is critical. Use annotations, specs, and flows. Make plenty of notes, diagrams, sketches, and all sorts of info repositories, and never underestimate even the shortest of scribbles in your notebook. It can come in handy any time. So don’t discard anything!
Why Enterprise UX is worth it?
Let’s be honest: Enterprise UX doesn’t always look glamorous. Aesthetics won’t always be a priority here. But you will be designing tools that impact thousands of lives, streamline critical business functions, and save millions of dollars in efficiency.
Enterprise UX is where complexity meets purpose and processes meet outcomes. It’s where designers grow into strategic thinkers. There is a great deal of domain knowledge to master. If you’re looking for depth, challenge, and long-term impact, this might be the next frontier of your UX career.
So, go ahead — peek behind the curtains. There’s this whole world waiting for your design magic to shape the industry that makes millions, feeds thousands, and builds nations.
