Defining Enterprise UX

Kiess points out that making a mistake when using healthcare software can have potentially tragic consequences. User interfaces such as that shown in Figure 1 make us realize how easy it might be for a busy healthcare professional to make a fatal mistake when performing a critical task such as entering prescription dosages. A medical software vendor designed this software. Enterprise UX can make massive impact in the domain of healthcare—and many others.

Image source: Chris Kiess

Factory Software

Consider the factories around the world that make everything from the sheets you sleep in, to the soap you wash with, to the car you drive to work. As Jonathan discussed in his three-part series for UXmatters titled “UX for the Industrial Environment,” even in the age of automation, the factory floor is more human than you might think, and the people who work there are happier and more productive with efficient, effective, and satisfying software applications.  But, in far too many cases, these workers end up using poorly designed solutions that force them to create their own workarounds.

Small-Business Software

But the scope of enterprise software—and the opportunity for enterprise UX to make a difference—is not limited to large enterprises such as hospitals and automobile plants. It extends its considerable reach into the world of small businesses as well. For example, residential real estate is a huge business, with 5,510,000 home sales in the United States in 2017. But much of its workforce comprises independent agents who work for a variety of brokerages, large and small. So, despite the size of the industry as a whole, these agents are saddled with frustrating, outdated software experiences—such as the user interface from a real-estate software vendor shown in Figure 2—that can actually hamper their ability to remain productive and competitive.

Image source: SoftwareSuggest

According to Chris Olsen, owner of Olsen Ziegler Realty in Cleveland, Ohio, one of the main issues for real-estate professionals is that many of the vendors who develop the more cost-effective home search and lead-management software solutions don’t bother to include any UX professionals in the design and development of their products.

“Many lower-priced vendors have a very basic approach where it looks like a software developer designed the user interface. These interfaces are reminiscent of a 1990s Windows application designed in Visual Basic. The poor UX of these products directly contributes to potential clients looking elsewhere, which no independent agent can afford.”—Chris Olsen

Modern, consumer-facing real-estate portals have only exacerbated the issues that independent agents face. Olsen continues, “After all, there are well-known consumer-facing portals such as Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com, and Redfin. They have achieved wide adoption for making searching for homes very efficient, easy, and fun. The bar has been set very high.”

Figure 3 shows an example of a home-search results page that a real-estate software vendor developed for a small brokerage. It probably isn’t causing any sleepless nights for executives at Zillow or Trulia.

Image source: MLSFinder

What Are the Unique Challenges of Enterprise UX?

Clearly, there is great value in empowering the medical professionals who help keep us healthy, factory workers who produce valuable goods, small-business owners who don’t have deep pockets, and countless others. Nevertheless, consumer-focused Web sites and mobile applications continue to garner the greatest UX investment and recognition. Why is this? While the reasons are many—some not relating solely to User Experience—there are some unique challenges that UX professionals tend to face when working on enterprise software, including the following:

• Enterprise software is usually highly specialized and complex. These can be massive products that experts use for several hours every day to get critical work done. UX designers and researchers working in enterprise domains face a steep learning curve.
• The user and the customer are rarely the same person. The customer who decides to purchase enterprise software is not usually the person who ends up using it. Vendors sell their wares to boardroom executives, not to the workers who must use their products daily. Conducting UX research to better understand enterprise users comes with its own set of obstacles—such as difficulties getting access to workers in the field, legal concerns about intellectual property, salespeople who own the customer relationship, and more. Doing guerrilla usability testing in a coffee shop will almost never be an option.
• The contexts of use and needs of the enterprise user are very different from those for consumer-facing applications. Today, the design of so much software assumes that users will be popping in and out of it.  But the design of many enterprise solutions must assume a deeper level of focus and greater time commitment from the user. Plus, the concept of simplification—which often masquerades as the subtraction of unnecessary features in business-to-consumer (B2C) apps—doesn’t map as cleanly to enterprise software. For workers, who might spend 20–40 hours per week using enterprise applications, hiding features under the guise of simplification can be detrimental to their product mastery, something we’ll explore in future columns. Also, the idea of releasing a minimum-viable product (MVP) as an early version of an application is rarely feasible in the enterprise space. There are certain functionality requirements that are non-negotiable for these users. Asking them to use a half-baked solution to get real work done would be neither fair nor realistic.
• There is less competition for enterprise vendors and a higher barrier to entry. As a result, bad experiences often already have a foot in the door—and, in some cases, have taken up permanent residence in many industries. A lack of competition often translates to very little UX investment because design has no perceived value. However, workers now have so much exposure to good user experiences—through the applications they use in their personal lives—that they have far less patience with bad user experiences at work. This is particularly true for enterprise mobile applications, which sit side by side with Google Maps and Twitter, so users can’t help but notice the difference.
• Legacy solutions may seem comfortable. In many cases, established enterprise-software vendors risk cannibalizing the success of their own legacy products—which might still be profitable—when salespeople show customers newer products with better experiences. As a result, sales departments are often disincentivized to advocate for a better, more modern product experience out of fear that it might harm sales for the old product they must keep afloat. Plus, given the high cost of transitioning to new software products, customers in many industries fall back on the old “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mindset.

How Can You Impact Enterprise UX Projects?

Exploring this question is why we decided to write this column. Our goal is to provide an enterprise-UX field guide of sorts, offering practical tips and examples that can help UX designers navigate the challenges that abound in this space. We’ll delve into a wide range of topics, including these:

• getting outside the organization to access enterprise workers
• maximizing learnings where user-research opportunities are scarce
• selling UX up the chain in your company
• championing user experience on engineering-centric teams
• addressing offline workflows in unexpected environments and contexts

Conclusion

You may be new to designing enterprise solutions, or perhaps you’ve been designing them for several years, waging the wars of enterprise UX alone or with a small group of fellow UX designers. Regardless of your familiarity with the space, we think you’ll find value in the information we plan to share. We’ll write about what we’ve learned through experience and observation, and we invite you to join us on this journey. Please engage with us by sharing your comments. We welcome your feedback and encourage you to suggest topics for us to cover. How do you define enterprise UX? What are some lessons you’d like to share?