Design: Enterprise UX Design

In Part 1 of this series, we defined inclusive design and acknowledged its ever-growing impact, including in industrial automation. We then described inclusive-design challenges in industrial automation and previewed how we solve them. In Part 2, we delved more deeply into a few of these design solutions, focusing on human factors in designing hardware, how we’ve evolved our terminology to be more inclusive, and some best practices for incorporating accessibility into our common design system.

Now, in Part 3, we’ll wrap up this series by covering the following topics:

• making our public-facing Web sites more accessible and inclusive
• recruiting diverse users to obtain their feedback
• adhering to localization best practices that support diverse users Read More

UX professionals often find it difficult to demonstrate the value of User Experience to enterprise product teams, especially when companies or organizations lack UX maturity. Perhaps you’ve found yourself outnumbered on teams of solution-focused developers and their like-minded peers, feeling as though no one understands your perspective. You might have been the recipient of a dismissive arm wave. Maybe someone has told you that a product or a feature does not require UX oversight—even though it does. Perhaps stakeholders have told you that they already know what users want or there isn’t enough time to address a product workflow that could satisfy a core user need.

When you meet resistance from teammates and stakeholders, do you turn tail and slink away, then allow a product to go to market without its receiving the appropriate level of UX attention? Hopefully not! Some battles are worth fighting—as uncomfortable as they might be. As I described in “Demonstrating the Value of User Experience to Enterprise Product Teams, Part 2,” responding tactfully to caustic feedback from teammates is a challenging skill to master. It requires empathy, a trait that UX professionals must often draw upon in relating to the people who use our products. It is just as important to demonstrate empathy for our teammates, who are under their own pressures and must often meet challenging deadlines. Read More

UX designers often have limited influence in enterprise environments with relatively immature User Experience cultures. So exhausting your hard-earned capital with stakeholders on the wrong things can create unnecessary obstacles.

In Part 1 of this two-part series, I presented the following scenarios in which it makes sense for UX designers to demonstrate some flexibility with their teammates and stakeholders:

• making aesthetic choices
• employing custom patterns and controls
• following a UX process
• managing teammates’ expectations
• using UX jargon
• defining the scope and timing of projects and features

Now, in Part 2, I’ll consider scenarios that necessitate UX designers’ taking a firmer stance. Then, I’ll suggest some ways of deciding whether a particular situation befits your taking one course of action over another—acknowledging that the best approach can sometimes be ambiguous. Read More