Column: Enterprise UX

Many of our colleagues still do not understand the function of UX design. This problem is systemic in many companies, cascading from a C-level where there is a gaping User Experience void—and no leader to fill it adequately—and fueling misconceptions at every level of the organization.

As a UXmatters reader, you probably don’t need me to educate you on the differences between User Experience and user-interface (UI) design. But many of the people with whom you work probably do need to better understand the differences—so they can more effectively engage your efforts and you can engage with theirs. Do you have time to sit each of them down and explain to them the fundamental differences between User Experience and UI design? Not likely. So, in this column, I’ll describe some ways in which you can progressively educate your colleagues on the differences between User Experience and UI design, as follows:

• tactfully responding to misinformed comments
• advocating for user-centered requirements
• producing deliverables that reveal the why behind your designs Read More

If you’ve conducted any kind of user research, you likely know how it feels for people you’ve recruited for research activities to ghost you. You’ve invested your time and effort in creating an interactive stimulus or interview script, called in favors from management to gain access to elusive customers and participants, and done dry runs using your stimulus or script to ensure it’s airtight. Then, when it comes time for a session … crickets. You’re left holding out hope that the person who agreed to participate in your research activity might actually show up.

Ghosting is on the rise and, as any UX professional can attest, the domain of User Experience is hardly immune to receiving a cold shoulder from research participants. What can you do to not only mitigate the risk of being ghosted but to react to such scenarios when they occur? Read More

What do you think of when you hear the term enterprise UX? Designing corporate Human Resources (HR) systems or intranets? Many articles and books for UX professionals focus on designing Web sites and mobile applications for consumers. But what about the silent majority of users in the workplace who are trying to get their job done? Many of them think of enterprise software as the generally sub-par tools that companies force them to use.

However, over the past few years, enterprise UX has started to get more attention from user-experience thought leaders. (There’s even a conference dedicated to it.) But what does enterprise UX actually mean? From what we’ve observed, it seems that there is not yet an agreed-upon definition of this term. This fuels confusion about enterprise UX, why it matters, and what scope it encompasses. Therefore, in our first column on this topic, we’ll

• provide a working definition of enterprise UX
• describe a few of the many environments in which enterprise UX makes a difference
• identify obstacles to designing and developing great enterprise software Read More