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Month: April 2014

Some Responses to “what does a good enterprise UX look like?”

My previous post generated a bit of commentary on one of the sites it syndicates to, so I thought I’d post them up here and follow up with a bit of response.

From Themadone:

“I think my answer would be that it should not feel like you’re trying to roll a large rock up a hill. With the obvious associated problems of something going wrong and you ending up at the bottom with a large rock on your face. Or finding the rock is stuck on something that you can’t readily see or do anything about.”

From Nojay:

“For various reasons my workflow involves an older graphics editing package, an esoteric OCR package, several web apps, another graphics package for review and testing and a batch image processing package for final release. I have to remember that “Paste” is Alt+F+W or [Shift+Insert] when editing, for the OCR package it’s [Ctrl+B] and for review it’s the classic [Ctrl+V]. Enterprise software MUST NOT work like this.”

I’ll acknowledge that I’m quoting a bit selectively in places, but can you spot the commonality between those responses? It’s been common with the verbal responses I’ve had too…

There’s a strong focus on what a good Enterprise UX isn’t.  The field is so bad that just not sucking is enough to be seen as a good experience.  That’s a pretty low bar.  It’s like having your personal best at the high jump being “didn’t tunnel underground”.

A couple of other responses did stray away from the negatives towards the positives – which I wasn’t really expecting.  I did my readership a disservice – which was nice to discover.  Some more selective quoting:

More from Nojay:

“That implies a consistent interface between apps with seamless switching and information transfer.”

From Katlinel*:

“Imperceptible? That is, the software enables you to accomplish the tasks you need to do, without getting in the way of those tasks. The software should facilitate this and not provide stumbling blocks that impede the user.”

From Cryx:

“At the moment user experience is often done like going to a convention. You open the door and there is a hubub of options. You may have a guide to the event, but you have to pick your way around to the areas of interest, and slowly fill up your bag with the info you want.”

“It should be more like you are the VIP. You say ‘I want X done, by X time’ and people scurry away and work out the best way to make it work for you. They come back and present the plan/information to you. They don’t go on at length about all the work they did, and keep asking you small questions. However if you bring your laser focus to a task they can tell you each step, and will let you modify things quickly and without fuss.”

From those it becomes clearer.

Good Enterprise UX plays nice

No enterprise software application exists in isolation – everything is just a step in somebody’s workflow, and needs to fit into that workflow.  Each enterprise application is there to fill a step, or some steps, or every step of somebody’s workflow… even if it’s not providing an end-to-end workflow, it’s still part of one and it needs to play nice with its neighbours.

It becomes clearer that enterprise software needs to not be a bottleneck or a hurdle.

Good Enterprise UX works for you

I particularly like the analogy in the final quote – about enterprise UX needing to be more like a concierge or a team of employees, being ready with what you need when you need it… but also serving a large number of users. I’d like to take it further, though – for common behaviours, I don’t think I should have to ask.  The software should know who am and what I do – all of that information is available within an enterprise anyway.

If it’s being like a concierge, it should be a really good concierge who can anticipate my needs and have prepared some information ahead of time.  I should be able to start my interaction with that software by being greeted with a clear picture of what’s going to be relevant in that interaction, to pick and choose from and add to if needed.

So, the comments exercise this time is slightly different.

In your day job, you almost certainly use some kind of enterprise software.  If the UI for it was a very, very good (human) concierge or PA, what would it be doing for you?

Please let me know either as comments where you see this post, on the original blog post at www.eggbox.org.uk or however you like on social media – but please tell me where so I can read!

What does a GOOD enterprise user experience look like?

It’s been a fair while since I posted on here, so I thought I’d try kicking off again with a question, and then see what comes back.  But, because not everyone works in the same field I’d better define some terms first:

Enterprise Software is software designed to serve the needs of an enterprise (typically a larger business) rather than an individual, although individual human users still have to use it and may have multiple different jobs to do which require them to use it.

User Experience is what you have when you are one of those individual human users being forced (it’s rarely a choice you’d make on your own) to use it.

So, on to the question:

What does a good enterprise software user experience look and feel like?

Answers in comments please. Or on your own blog or social media of choice, but let me know about them here.

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