7 Reasons why usability is key to enterprise UX

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With the rising popularity of user experience and proven returns, enterprises have amped up the usability of their legacy software. But it is commonly observed that due to less attention to user satisfaction, they undergo optimizations less frequently.

As a result, Enterprise UX riddled with usability issues lead to poor employee experience and frustration, which in turn decreases the overall productivity. An experienced enterprise UX design company understand these issues and challenges and helps to solve them.

In this blog, we will explore usability issues in Enterprise UX and why usability is so critical for the success of enterprise software. We will also provide techniques on how you as a product designer can improve its usability. Let’s dive right into it.

Why enterprise UX often suffers from usability issues?

The buyer of the Enterprise UX is never the end-user or employee and designing an enterprise UX is an expensive affair.

Therefore, costs are the prime consideration rather than usability. This can lead to compromising the effectiveness of enterprise UX.

Too many opinions when choosing an Enterprise UX can also make the usability of the enterprise UX take a backseat.

Tight and intricate security systems which are curated for protecting and securing the UX design might result in reducing the users accessing power and will result in reduced usability.

Enterprise UX vs. consumer UX

A Consumer UX is more focused on the ease of use of applications and their aesthetic representations. In contrast, Enterprise UX is strictly aimed at getting maximum efficiency from employees, ease of use, and how much it is able to reduce the workload of the employees.

In order to understand an Enterprise UX, employees are expected to have a fair share of knowledge on the various technology-induced tools that are already incorporated by the business and the industry. But a Consumer UX seldom requires such insights or technical constraints.

A Consumer UX is designed only after immense market research. Even after the said research, the results are ambiguous until it is released in the market. But, in the case of an Enterprise UX, it is the exact opposite. The UX designers already have an idea of the users they are catering to; the sample of these users/employees is way smaller than the Consumer UX crowd.

The employees are required to undergo training in order to adapt to the conditions and facilitation of the Enterprise UX. Still, the Consumer UX is made keeping in mind the different kinds of consumers who require very little knowledge to understand the UX design.

The users of Enterprise UX don’t have a choice but to adapt to a design that suits their choice because the whole organisation follows a particular program uniformly. An end consumer doesn’t require mandatorily to follow any particular Consumer UX.

An Enterprise UX has more scope and expense when compared to Consumer UX. Therefore, designing an Enterprise UX is more crucial when compared with Customer UX.

Enterprise UX is complex in nature, and one solution may not be enough to satisfy the problems faced by an organisation. Consumer UX is not that complex in nature and might not require such in-depth study for designing.

Why is usability a requirement for enterprise UX?

1. Improved Productivity: Corporates are always in a tough race against time, and therefore it is extremely necessary to keep up with the deadlines. If the Enterprise UX design is difficult to comply with, it will easily affect the activity flow and cause delays on the work front.

2. Higher ROI: When an organisation looks to adapt an Enterprise UX, one of the main aims is to simplify the work and yield higher returns. A study conducted by McKinsey found a strong correlation between higher business performance and design. For the ideal growth of the company, it is always necessary to reap maximum benefits with minimal effort.

3. Aids learning: If Enterprise UX possesses a stiff learning curve, it will deter the employees from accommodating the new work system. A well-structured UX will help the users to easily get accustomed to the varied processes of the system and help in grasping the idea of the usage of tools.

4. Improved user experience: Integration of the tools with multiple platforms is an essential feature that must be a mandatory part of the Enterprise UX. Such integrations with popular platforms result in a great user experience.

5. Quick adoption: Prototyping and testing have been traditionally different work systems. Infusing rapid prototyping in the Enterprise UX will help in increasing the chances of the program getting adapted by an enterprise.

6. Enhanced interactivity: When the Enterprise UX is created with an interactive feature, it gets more noticed by organisations. An interactive feature will typically include gestures that create a responsive experience for the user.

It is an attractive feature when created with an understanding of the kind of industry or premise that the Enterprise UX is working with.

7. Reduction in errors: The Enterprise UX should make fewer severe errors. The severity of the errors can be bifurcated into several heads: critical severity, high severity, medium severity and low severity.

Critical and High severity errors have to be avoided at all costs because it results in the user being unable to perform or complete their intended tasks. Thus, the usability of the UX takes a downfall.

How to improve usability of enterprise UX?

Transparency while accommodating changes

It is necessary to inform the employees or the users of the changes that will be accommodated to improve the features of the enterprise UX.

To keep the users in the dark and suddenly expecting them to adapt to the changes will create fear and resistance to change. Explaining the need for change and its effectiveness will make the changes transparent and more welcoming for employees.

Creation of a “user-friendly’ team

It is necessary to have experienced people on board when it comes to maximising the usability of the Enterprise UX. An in-house team of experienced individuals can be out of the budget limitations of the company.

In such cases, the company can fish out capable individuals who might have some knowledge of UX designing and build a team from the same.

A group of individuals will be able to confirm the idea of the usability of the Enterprise UX and establish the same across the various departments pertaining to a company.

Involving the users

To understand the viability of the Enterprise UX design, it is necessary to understand the opinions of the users themselves. Even though it is ambitious to formulate UX design only based on the user’s preferences, it is convenient to deduct discrepancies that might occur when done without such consultations.

The techniques used to collect user responses are MVP prototyping, contextual investigation, and even remote usability testing to ensure findings are used to enhance the usability of Enterprise UX.
Holistic development of design is possible when these findings are taken into consideration.

Initiation design thinking process

Design thinking is an iterative process that is used to understand users, analyse challenges, tackle problems, and create efficient solutions to prototype and test.

Design thinking moves forward through different stages like:

1. Understanding the requirements of the users.
2. Framing ideal conclusions on the needs of the users
3. Defining the expectations and formulation of ideas from them.
4. Creating solutions
5. Testing those solutions

The induction of design thinking into the enterprise system ensures that the company focuses on creating an Enterprise UX which promotes utmost usability to the users.

Field studies

Personal interactions with users are one form of testing the efficacy of the UX design. The users will comprise the entire organisation and individuals. The designers have to analyse and understand the demands of both parties and incorporate the same to deliver a usable UX design.

Conclusion

Usability in enterprise UX is a key element that makes or breaks the construed design. It is essential to understand the usability of the product before implementing it in an organisation.

Taking care of usability in the enterprise UX from an early stage ensures that the team will be able to adapt and innovate their way around it. In order to gain a competitive advantage in the digitally advanced world, enterprises need to keep up with the latest trends and technologies that bolster the productivity and growth of their employees.

Facing frequent complaints from your employees on your enterprise application? Hire an experienced enterprise UX design agency like us. We will work together to make your employees productive and happy again!

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7 Biggest Challenges in Enterprise UX and How to Overcome Them?

Importance of User Research for Enterprise UX