In my role as a Product-Design Lead at VMware Design, I craft user experiences for enterprise products and services that are integral to customers’ operations. These products help enterprise users handle intricate, sensitive data relating to cloud infrastructure, security, and networking. Therefore, our UX design process demands high standards of performance, reliability, and usability.

Designing enterprise products necessitates comprehensive thinking, managing complexity, and welcoming uncertainties. Enterprise UX design is a field for people who thrive on solving complex problems and enjoy piecing together puzzles. However, it comes with its own set of challenges and uncertainties. For example, how can UX designers strike a balance between functionality and simplicity? How can you reconcile the expectations and requirements of different stakeholders? How do you stay adaptable to evolving market trends and customer needs?

In this article, I’ll share my knowledge and strategies for how you can navigate such challenges and uncertainties by improving the UX design process through effective collaboration. I’ll also share some practical examples, as well as some tools that you can utilize in your day-to-day work. Plus, I’ll discuss some challenges that you’ve probably encountered and how you can address them. Read More

For any business-to-business (B2B) startup, an effective user-onboarding process isn’t just a nice-to-have, but a pivotal factor in driving customer satisfaction and retention, increasing customers’ Lifetime Value (LTV), and driving sustainable business growth. An effective user-onboarding process can turn a customer’s initial interest into a long-term commitment.

The path to successful user onboarding in the B2B world is distinct from that of business-to-consumer (B2C) organizations. The challenges are unique and stem from the different expectations and needs of business clients. In B2B, the process of making a decision to become a customer typically involves multiple stakeholders, who have their own concerns and criteria. This complexity requires a more tailored onboarding experience that caters to the diverse roles and interests within a single large organization. Read More

Digital transformation is the need of the hour for businesses across all industries—from information technology (IT) and automobile manufacturing to healthcare services. Through the implementation of digital transformation by automating processes, maximizing return on investment (ROI), and enhancing the customer experience, enterprises can evolve into efficient, scalable business units.

According to Gartner, “Eighty-seven percent of senior business leaders say digitalization is a company priority, yet only 40% of organizations have brought digital initiatives to scale.”

When engaging in the process of digital transformation, an organization must foresee possible technological and workforce challenges and financial barriers that they might experience when adopting new technologies and replacing conventional methods. Can you implement digital transformation within your business and achieve substantial growth? Yes, it is possible. By reading this article, you can gain a good understanding of some of the most common challenges of digital transformation and how you can overcome them. Read More

Not all Customer Success executives have had the opportunity to experience deep dives with UX researchers and designers to see how the magic is made. I consider myself lucky to have worked with world-class UX teams at companies such as LinkedIn, Cisco, and Coursera. But the unpopular reality for UX professionals is that the success of a product hinges heavily on factors beyond the platform—no matter how well thought out the design is. With increasing frequency, companies are coming up with solutions with Customer Education, in ways that are dissociated from the UX team.

Customer Education is a relatively new function that is typically a part of a Customer Success (CS) or Customer Marketing organization. Their goal is to provide proactive communications and resources that change behaviors, enabling users to gain maximal value from the solutions they’ve purchased. However, it is rare for the Customer Education team and the UX team to collaborate. In fact, in the State of Customer Success 2023 Survey, User Experience didn’t make the top-10 list of departments that CS partners with. Read More

As we enter 2024, artificial intelligence (AI) is part of virtually every product-design conversation. Companies are racing to incorporate AI into their products, hoping to push the limits of innovation to attract and engage customers and impact the business’s bottom line. As UX designers, our charter is always to create seamless relationships between users and digital products. AI represents a whole new field of possible experiences.

Now, with AI ubiquitously underpinning so many new products, I believe the biggest challenge of 2024 will be thoughtfully placing AI at the forefront of innovation by understanding users’ perspectives, needs, concerns, and objectives. AI can and will do many amazing things. The big question is: what should it do?

In this column, I’ll share some of my reflections regarding the adoption of AI by users, focusing particularly on what we’ve learned about their expectations and attitudes. Read More

For anyone who designs user interfaces, accessibility and its associated value and impacts are important design considerations. However, accessibility best practices alone do not adequately address all aspects of human capabilities and people’s differences—whether physical or cognitive or a combination of the two. Individuals’ backgrounds, cultures, and other geographical and socioeconomic variables play a part as well.

Moreover, breaking down barriers and empowering humans of all capabilities becomes more fraught and challenging within the context of industrial automation, where a modernization lag and inertia regarding digital transformation to maximize the latest technologies and innovations still exist—which has negative impacts on fostering inclusivity. At Rockwell Automation, we’re making progress in cultivating inclusive-design practices that enable industrial workers in some of the most challenging contexts on the planet and uncovering best practices that could benefit any organization. Read More

Today, the world of digital product design exists at the intersection of East and West, where the interplay between imitation and innovation has shaped the evolving digital landscape. As a UX designer experiencing various cultures, I want to explore how their intersections impact the user interface (UI), the user experience, and product strategy.

In this article, I’ll examine the historical trends of imitation and innovation between the West and Asia, explore how Asian user-driven approaches influence digital products in the West, and share how these insights have influenced my design choices.

However, before delving further into this topic, I must acknowledge that we sometimes overgeneralize in our discussion of cultural differences in UX design. To address this concern, I've gathered specific relevant case studies that provide holistic demonstrations of the points that I intend to explore. Read More

Design is an intrinsic part of human culture, reflecting our ability to shape and improve the world around us. Whether we’re considering the architecture of our cities, the products we use daily, or the digital user interfaces that connect us globally, design is the language through which we express our creativity, solve problems, and envision the future.

Design encompasses multiple disciplines, including UX design, graphic design, industrial design, fashion design, and interior design, among others. Each of these domains contributes to the aesthetics, functionality, and user friendliness of the products and environments with which we interact. Read More

As UX professionals, having a general understanding of the ways in which users experience a Web site can be helpful, but there is truly immense value in using data analytics to pin down exact data points that can inform the UX design process.

In this article, I’ll consider how UX designers can leverage data analytics to enhance the user experience in a variety of ways. For example, you can use data analytics to better understand users, reap significant benefits by solving customers’ issues, or refine a Web site’s content. Perhaps most importantly, you can increase conversions by improving the effectiveness of calls to action (CTAs) or the purchasing process on an ecommerce site. Read More