What is UX?
First of all, UX is not UI.
User Experience (UX) is a way of thinking about the overall quality of a user's interaction with a product, service, or system.
While this "experience" most likely involves interacting with various User Interfaces (UI), UX is focused on the holistic aspects of the journey a human user goes on when interacting with a system or process.
UI is more local to specific applications, focused on direct human-computer interactions and the elements that appear on a screen or device that enable user inputs, actions, and navigation.
UX is a broader set of concepts that, when thought of end-to-end, can provide human users with consistently positive experiences that meet or exceed expectations, leading to positive emotional responses to the system, leading to deeper and more productive interaction with the system over time.
And because UX is focused on human experience, it naturally incorporates aspects of human psychology to understand how to best design experiences to maximize the value of every interaction, every time, for all involved.
Why? Because...well...we are human, and humans are emotional creatures. We feel things. More times than not we prefer feeling good than we do feeling bad, and UX sits at the intersection of human psychology and interface design.
UX makes sure interactions provide an experience that at a minimum doesn't frustrate the hell out of people, and optimally leaves them feeling good about having experienced the interaction.
Key Concepts of User Experience (UX)
At its core, UX focuses on concepts such as:
- Usability - Is it easy and intuitive to use?
- Usefulness - Is it functional? Does it get a job done?
- Accessibility - Can anyone use it?
- Desirability - Would anyone even want to use it?
- Findability - Can the right information and context be quickly located?
Disciplines and domains within UX include:
- Information Architecture (IA)
- User-Centered Design (UCD)
- Usability and Interaction Design
- Journey Design
- Accessibility Design and Inclusive UX
- Emotional Design and Persuasive UX
- UX Research and User Testing
Enterprise UX vs. Digital Product UX
How is UX in the enterprise different from UX in digital product design?
Let's start by being upfront about something - enterprises know that users don't get much of a choice when it comes to the apps they have to use while on the clock.
Because of this, there is an implied level of tolerance for little things like inconsistencies in the way certain interactions are handled, or a deprioritization of the "look and feel" elements of experience design.
That is to say, if enterprise user "experiences" get any thoughtful design at all.
On the other hand, if a commercial website or app is designed poorly, resulting in consistently negative experiences for users, users will simply go elsewhere for a better experience.
Bigger than that though is the reality that UX in the enterprise has the distinct challenge of having to balance elements of both Individual and organizational psychology.
Beyond just the usability needs of the one or the few, enterprise UX has to delicately balance both local and global needs and optimization simultaneously.
It’s hard work getting this right. And it takes time. And sometimes that costs money.
Which probably explains the lack of appetite for even taking on the current state of UX in the enterprise to begin with…it’s difficult to see how the juice would be worth the squeeze.
What Are the Problems with Enterprise UX?
What unique UX challenges does the enterprise face? Besides being an afterthought in many projects and initiatives, if it's even thought of at all, the laundry list of problems that we could potentially solve for with a rethinking of UX in the enterprise stems mostly from the fact that enterprises are made up of more than one person.
No, I'm not being a smartass or splitting hairs when I say that (promise). Product UX focuses mainly on individuals and their interactions with a single product. In an enterprise, we can assume there is more than one person involved with a workflow, process, or interaction within an organization.
And because there are multiple people, working both individually and as part of larger teams and groups, and because these people all interact with a shared set of products within the organization, the level of complexity involved in crafting both positive and ubiquitous experiences within any grouping of humans quickly rises above most of our pay grades.
To this point, please allow me to walk through the initial thoughts on UX problems to solve in the enterprise that emerged from my recent focused thinking on a complete do-over on how we even think about technology in the enterprise.
Mixed / Chaotic Experiences
Every organization has more than one tool, service, application, or system that it uses to conduct whatever business it needs to on a going basis.
In the olden days of Probably Before Your Time, we really didn't have to think much about this problem. Graphical user interfaces weren't even a thing at one point. Our huge monolithic systems were accessed by terminals and green screens and such.
Well, the monoliths were blown up into tiny pieces and redistributed across the "cloud" as "apps" - what we now refer to as "Software-as-a-Service" (SaaS) applications - and all of a sudden "The Business" could skip the IT line and slap down a credit card and be up and running on a new B2B SaaS app in minutes.
What could possibly go wrong?
Well, for one, we're now looking at SaaS sprawl, with the number of cloud-based applications and tools in some organizations numbering in the hundreds or even thousands.
And every single one of those tools or applications, unless they are headless by design or bolt-on to other applications or platforms, will come with their own UX.
Now go watch the world through the eyeballs of your enterprise users. They have to navigate all of these different applications, each having their own look-and-feel, their own way of doing things, and their own way helping users find and interact with information.
Does it make you feel bewildered, exhausted, frustrated, and like your brain is running on 8 different hamster wheels at once?
Yeah, that's the problem I'm describing.
Computer Says No
I hope you haven't had to experience what I have over the past several years with the "Computer Says No" problem.
I don't know which crushes my soul faster: Having a human tell me they can't do something for me because they have no ability or authorization to do so within the systems they interact with in providing (performative) "service" to customers...
...or the look they give you when they realize they have been stripped of all agency to the point where it is dehumanizing.
While the main point of this problem stems from mass corporate de-risking that has been occurring under the guise of "efficiency" and "optimization" over the past several years, the end result is a complete disregard for the human experience - customer or employee - as long as it saves a buck.
Besides, who even needs humans anymore when we have such awesome and mature enterprise agentic AI products on the market demonstrating incredible shareholder value? (Note - was definitely being a smartass this time.)
Can't Find a Damn Thing
My god, we haven't figured out basic Information Architecture (IA) after all of these decades, and now enterprises are buying into the myth that AI will somehow skip over all of the foundational issues with basic data and information structuring...that enterprises never bothered to solve for in the first place?
Oy vey.
Cumbersome Data Entry
I blame this one on the enterprise software vendors. Their neglect of UX - or more accurately their forcing of bad idealistic UX patterns on us (Salesforce LIghtning, anyone?) - created a doom loop of user expectations.
People created mental models and optimized their click paths around kludgy, heavyweight interfaces and static interaction patterns. It's all stakeholders really knew how to ask for in system development initiatives, and again because UX is typically an afterthought in the enterprise, the inertia of heavy form-based data entry, with a bunch of fields dumped on a single screen without context or guidance, became the status quo.
Even beyond entering data, simply working within systems and applications that were not designed with the end user in mind can introduce stress, negative emotions, and cognitive load for humans.
Speaking of such...
High Friction Interaction
To the employees who slog through ugly, dysfunctional, and disconnected systems just to get the basics of your job done on a day-to-day basis:
- I'm sorry and here's a hug
- You are not only seen, you are an unsung hero
Journeys to Nowhere
Jumping into the Way Back Machine again, there was a time when we used to have to actually call into call centers, beep-boop on our phones to get through poorly designed IVRs and menu systems.…
…sit on hold for 20-200 minutes........
……..then re-beep-boop your data or re-explain it to random agents 17 different times as if you didn't beep-boop or explain it the first 16..............
.............then, inexplicably, get disconnected and have to start all over.
Wait, what? That's still happening? What do you mean it's even worse today?
And now we're finding new ways to torment customers by pushing them to digital apps and portals "designed" by domain decision makers or deeply technical back-end developers?
Amazing.
High Tacit or Institutional Knowledge Requirements
I have deeper thoughts on the concepts of personal as well as enterprise knowledge management that I hope to build out over time, but at the end of the day the problem space that I'm describing and attempting to address is simply the fact that knowledge management in the enterprise probably gets even less attention than UX in the enterprise, despite human knowledge being the most valuable intangible asset imaginable.
High Cognitive Load
On reflection, I think the entire concept of "Cognitive Load" is probably more an underlying component to all of these potential problem spaces, but I'll leave you with this thought...
People are stressed. People are burned out. As both individuals and enterprises, we have to be mindful of where we apply our precious little attention and focus in this noisy world we share.
We have very little left to give, with the scale and volume of potential takers growing on a daily basis.
This is a problem that extends far beyond enterprises into all of society, but for the sake of this thought exercise I will stay laser focused on the enterprise.
What else are you seeing out there in terms of opportunities to improve on UX in the enterprise? Did I miss any other major problem spaces?
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