Enterprise UX: Learning from Yelp, Netflix, and Airbnb
When people download an app from the app store, they expect it to be intuitive, effective, and visually appealing. But if the experience doesn’t meet their expectations they will delete it without a second thought. These same expectations have crept into their professional lives: if the software they use at work delivers a poor user experience, they will avoid adoption and inevitably find workarounds (spreadsheets, anyone?).
Companies are now investing in their enterprise design teams and making the UX of their internal facing software a top priority. As a result, the quality of UX in enterprise applications is rapidly catching up to that of consumer-facing applications.

While enterprise applications and consumer facing applications will always remain distinct, the overlap between the two is only growing. In this article I would like to consider how some examples of excellent UX in widely-used consumer facing applications can be translated into the context of enterprise product design.
Findability and Discoverability in Yelp
I am notoriously indecisive when it comes to food. Whether it is picking a place to eat or picking a dish to order, it is always a struggle. But Yelp helps me with this process. When I am trying to choose a restaurant I can open Yelp and use all sorts of filter combinations to help me narrow my choices. I can have Yelp give me a list of restaurants within a specific geographic area on my map. If I can’t decide between two dishes when I’m trying to order, I can request to only see reviews or photos of the dishes that I am choosing between. Turns out that enchilada I was considering looks like a crime scene, so I am going to go with the trusty burrito.
As a member of the Enterprise Product Design team at Wayfair, I know that findability is crucial to ensuring our users can achieve their goals. For example, we are currently designing a platform that will be used to manage the production and storage of media assets that appear on Wayfair.com. It is paramount that users are able to find these media files in a flexible way, whether by searching, filtering, or navigating. But just like someone using Yelp, we strive for our users to not only find whatever they are looking for, but also help them discover new things. When our users are looking for a specific media asset, they should be presented with other related assets and be able to choose which works best. What if they are presented with a particular asset that wasn’t in their original vision but turns out to be a better fit for the particular project they were working on? Not only will that that project be enhanced, but that user will be delighted! (Yes, it is in fact possible to delight users of enterprise products!)
Personalization in Netflix
Remember when Netflix didn’t have multiple profiles and all the people mooching the account had to share the same menu? It was a mess: viewing histories mashed together, a smattering of recommended shows that were based on the weird viewing history of the mooching collective. Eventually Netflix introduced different profiles for each of the users on a single account. Now when you log in, you see recommendations for shows that are specifically tailored based on your unique viewing habits. Their algorithm takes into account your personal viewing preferences, the preferences of other members with similar taste, the time of day that you watch, the devices you watch on, and how long you watch. Yes, I am slightly weirded out that Netflix knows that I am particularly drawn to “Mind-bending futuristic sci-fi movies filmed in the 1980s.” But apparently this specificity pays off: Netflix reported that over 80% of the shows watched on their platform were a result of their recommendations. One reason why Netflix is now a staple in so many homes across the world is because it learned how to adapt to each individual person in each individual home.

Integrating features for personalization is an effective means to empower users of Enterprise products as well. A particular tool may have thousands of users spread across many roles within a company. Because each user may approach the tool with a different set of goals, there will be many different users interacting with the tool completely differently. Why should a tool show a user information that is completely unimportant to them? Instead, each user should be presented with whatever content is most relevant to their daily tasks and goals.
To take it to the next level, the tool could be programmed to make inferences based on each user’s tendencies and then tailor a unique experience — just like Netflix. One example is a system automatically bringing the most accessed content to the top of the screen. This requires no extra effort from the user and can be a simple yet powerful means to optimize a workflow. This type of personalization not only increases efficiency, but it can also lend a sense of ownership to the user.
Scalability and AirBnB
Despite being just over ten years old, AirBnB has established itself as a premier service for booking accommodations for travelers around the world. They have a presence in 65,000 cities across 191 countries, and millions of loyal users who have come to know and trust their brand. International travel planning is normally something that most people associate with being logistically complicated and stressful, but the elegant flow of their website and app makes travel planning feel painless. But AirBnB’s greatest achievement is actually the massive scale that they have achieved in a relatively short period of time. When you begin to consider all of the factors that complicate entry into a new international market for an e-commerce company — even things as fundamental as the currency conversion or the language translation to serve 191 different countries — it is hard not to admire their growth. This took an inordinate amount of strategic planning, and it undoubtedly started at the inception of the company. In the words of Joe Zadeh, Airbnb’s VP of Product, “for AirBnB to work, we have to be everywhere.”

When an enterprise product is designed for scalability it affords far more agility throughout the development process and is more conducive to optimizing user experience. Working on the Enterprise Product Design Team at Wayfair has instilled me with the importance of designing for scalability. As our company continues to experience rapid growth and expansion into new international markets, our software must not only meet current users’ needs, but it must be adaptable to meet future needs that may arise. One of our primary responsibilities as designers is to create products that can continue to grow and evolve as rapidly as our company is.

One of the projects I worked on earlier this year was to build a tool that will streamline the way in which product names are created and maintained on Wayfair.com. Because the vast majority of our customer base interact with the English formats of our website, the early versions of this tool will only accommodate English names. However, a critical part of my concept exploration was to consider how this tool will function in other languages like German or French. German words, for example, tend to grow to be very long because the language allows for multiple words to be tacked on to create a single, sometimes enormous word (my personal favorite is Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften, which means “insurance companies providing legal protection”). The nuances of the German language will surely affect how this tool operates for the German site, and this is something that I was sure to keep in mind as I explored different concepts for my designs. This is one of many examples that illustrates how strategic planning for scalability and adaptability shouldn’t just be a consideration — it should be a priority.
Bridging the Gap between Consumer facing and Enterprise UX
As people have become more accustomed to wonderfully designed app and web experiences at home, they have also come to expect this same standard in the applications and software they use at work. By looking at some of the things that consumer facing applications have done well, enterprise designers can find valuable insights that they can translate into their own design thinking.

