Five lessons from designing for an enterprise company
Last year when I joined Designit, I took part in a design-led digital transformation project for an enterprise in India. The project’s scope was huge: reimagining legacy core processes using a human-centric approach — for an organization of over 170,000. The ultimate goal was to enable the company and its people to reach their goals and be future-ready.
By Rahul Dudeja
As a design lead, I drove the user experience for one of the project’s tracks. Keeping in mind the opportunity spaces we identified during the research phase, I adapted our strategic design process to create employee-centric digital interactions for all organization’s employees and stakeholders. Our client’s complex structure presented unique challenges in defining a vision for the organization’s future.
Here are five insights from this rollercoaster ride:
1. Adopting best practices doesn’t necessarily ensure the best solution.
As designers, we’re sometimes biased towards the best practices of our industry, referencing that Google did this or Facebook uses that. While making those design decisions may seem safe in most cases, they might not provide the optimum user experience every time.
Though it’s crucial to focus on accessibility and legibility, it’s also important to avoid unnecessary vertical scrolling to best use prime screen real estate. It’s surprising to see that a slight tradeoff in one area can increase the overall user experience. For instance, based on user testing results, when we tweaked our design to be a bit more compact by reducing white space, we observed significant efficiency improvements (around 10% less time) for users, compared to a less dense design. Because more content was available in the same space, they took less time to find the element they were looking for. A good designer knows when to pull the strings, but a great designer knows when to stop.
2. Ship fast and deliver in small drops, one drop at a time.
Designing for an enterprise can be a little like replacing the hard drive while the computer is still running. Incremental updates in the right direction ensure users get enough time to adapt and break the inherent resistance they have in accepting change. Additionally, it also gives enough time to the engineering team to prepare and align the resources needed to realize that design. Only when all teams run in harmony can we expect excellent, functional software that meets user expectations.
- Designing for an enterprise can be a little like replacing the hard drive while the computer is still running.
Additionally, it’s imperative to take the time to do impact analysis every time you make a change. Building active feedback loops through regular pre-design and post-design workshops with the team helps you gather insights on the run and adapt to ever-evolving business requirements. A good design should be evolutionary, not revolutionary.
3. It’s a fine line between what the client wants and what they need.
After nearly nine years in the design industry, I’ve come to realize that designing on command practically never ends well. People usually ask for something they want, not necessarily for what they need. When you act as an advocate for your users, you must stand up and appropriately challenge what you trust is wrong or misguided, even if it means going against what your client is saying. It’s not easy in the beginning, but once the client understands the value you’re going to add, you’re nearly there.
4. Never forget the ‘scale’ and ‘compounding’ effects.
When you design for enterprise, a penny saved in one place eventually compounds to thousands of dollars. Similarly, the impact of your designs is also magnified multiple times when it affects the productivity of users, for better or for worse.
For instance, let’s assume the design you proposed empowers your users to do a task two seconds faster than the old design. And if the same task is repeated 50 times in a day during the user’s routine work schedule, you would save 100 seconds for that user in a day. If 1,000 users save 100 seconds each day, it would compound to 1000x100 seconds of saved time for the enterprise (roughly 27 hours each day). Bottom line: before making any design decision, understand the impact that your change will mean to the business and the users.
5. Temporary solutions are like bad habits — they don’t go easily!
As designers, whenever we propose a solution, we think about multiple tangents at the same time. For instance, whether the solution is user-friendly, technically feasible, scalable, inventive, etc. And we eventually reach a solution that meets our constraints to the best of our understanding.
But maybe you didn’t know that someone, somewhere made a commitment to leadership, and it turns out you only have half of the time you initially planned to realize your design. Another person will propose an alternate solution that theoretically solves the issue, and it can be achieved in that limited time frame, but your evaluation says it’s not a great solution. You defend your original proposition, but still, you get this: “It’s temporary, we’ll build that better one next time.”
Beware — it’s a trap! Run as fast as you can!
Sometimes you’ll be able to push back, sometimes you won’t. In these situations, you need to remind your stakeholders of the importance of the solution you proposed and the value it was supposed to add. Commit to a future action plan. When untracked, temporary solutions can last for a long time.
In summary
There can be many moving parts and stakeholders to juggle when designing for large organizations. Keeping these things in mind during enterprise projects — don’t default to best practices, ship in fast and small drops, never forget that your solution will scale, and challenge the client — will ensure that your project will positively impact thousands of users.
