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What Is Enterprise UX? - Part 1

Enterprise UX. Most UXers have no idea another whole field of UX exists. Nor do most the UX gurus. Enterprise UX is where you want to be if you really want a challenge. Why?


Enterprise UX is the design of usually proprietary internal applications that run businesses — complex businesses. Those applications handle a LOT of data. Not only does it have to be entered into the system, but it has to be displayed, associated from one thing to another and then reported on. Complex reference data is created based on customers, pricing, costs and operating procedures. Processes and production levels are observed, reported and commented on. But, there is never one standard process, because sales will always sell something unexpected and government compliance regulations must be applied. Governmental and other forms have to be created and sent. Communications have to be enacted with customers, governments, service providers and data must be provided to them all.

A large intentional company multiplies that complexity by additional languages and governmental regulation and local laws. And that's just supporting the actual work of the company. Add on top of the inner workings of the company, too.

And, there are people who sit at a computer all day doing part of this work. If the company has been around for a while, they're working in everything from COBOL blue screens to the latest technologies. Our job is to make them as successful and performant as possible. Yes, it's about creating human performance.

While I want employees to have a good experience with my work, my goal is not to create a "delightful" experience, nor to convince someone to buy something. My job is to make the work as easy as possible so our employees can do their work as quickly and accurately as possible. I'm trying to create more production for the company. This means having a much greater understanding of our employees, their technical, psychological and physical abilities and having a really good understanding of psychological and physiological tenets as applied to UI design.

The challenges to this work are incredibly numerous:
  • crazy business rules
  • dealing with more data than in your email box on a single screen
  • lack of documented enterprise UI patterns — we're always having to modify B2C patterns to handle a lot more data
  • multiple technologies which create inconsistent interactions across them
  • inconsistent technical patterns that create our inability to create consistent interactions
  • lack of access to employees to do user research and usability testing
  • lack of access to customers to do user research and usability testing
  • lack of understanding by just about everyone but the UX department that our job is more than just making the UI look pretty
  • managers, business owners and project teams who all have opinions on design
  • agile environments that don't give us time to do user research
  • being spread across more than one project at a time.
How do you work in this world? It's crazy, But if you like to problem solve and you work in enterprise design, customer-facing UX will soon look very, very boring.

For all you other enterprise UXers out there, what do you think? Have I described it accurately?

What is Enterprise UX? - Part 2


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