“Keep it simple” is a popular saying in design, made famous by Steve Krug. For over twenty years, it’s been a key rule in design and user experience. It shows us how to make things easy and user-friendly.
In this exploration, we aim to delve into the intricacies of enterprise design. It is crucial to emphasize that enterprise UX inherently diverges from consumer UX in its core aspects. Consequently, this necessitates a nuanced adaptation of Krug’s principles specifically tailored for the design of enterprise-level software.
What does Enterprise UX Design mean?
Prior to delving into the distinctive characteristics that define enterprise UX as a unique field, it is imperative to establish a foundational understanding of its essence.
Contrasting with consumer UX, enterprise UX design is centered around crafting user experiences for professional environments. This typically involves the development of sophisticated business-to-business (b2b) applications tailored to the intricate needs of large-scale organizations. Learn more about this at digital product design.
Learning curves aren’t necessarily a bad thing.
Steve Krug says that products that are hard to understand often frustrate people. Usually, products with difficult learning curves don’t do well in today’s business world. Customers generally prefer things that are easy to use. However, this might not always apply to enterprise products.
Most enterprise users are experienced users, and we need to remember this when we design products for them. They use specialized software every day, often for many years, and are familiar with how these products work.
Designing an interface that requires a bit of learning and has a steeper learning curve isn’t a bad thing. It means that once users spend some time training and learning, they can work more efficiently.
Consider professional software like Figma, Sketch, or Adobe Pro – they all have lots of shortcuts. It might take some time to get the hang of these shortcuts, but once you do, they really help you work faster and more efficiently.
Be careful when simplifying Enterprise UX.
We know it’s important to make interfaces simple and clear. But, we also need to remember that tasks in enterprise software are often complex. Trying too hard to make the UI clean might take away important details that users need to do their work.
Also, there’s a chance that making the interface too simple could actually cause problems instead of solving them. Think about a product interface that shows lots of charts and data, like a trading platform.
A professional who works with visual data regularly needs to have quick access to it all the time. It’s frustrating and inefficient if they have to take extra steps to get to important features. This is one of the key differences between consumer UX and enterprise UX (eUX). For more insights into this, check out Linkup Studio.
Enterprise users often deal with poor UX.
We’re not criticizing enterprise designers, honestly. But it’s a fact that big companies don’t frequently update their software. This makes sense. When a company has been using the same software for years, switching to something new can be really complicated.
Because of this, software providers don’t have much reason to make changes. Their enterprise clients are likely to stick with them regardless. Also, this situation doesn’t really encourage strong competition among enterprise software providers.
That being said, we’re hopeful that a move towards better UX is just a matter of time. Eventually, a big change in UX will transform the industry, and it’s better to be ahead of that change.
In conclusion
To thank you, our valued reader, for sticking with us to the end, we’ve created a picture that sums up the main points of this article. We hope you find it useful. For a visual representation of these concepts, watch this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9IeOTfOlbE.
Although the “don’t make me think” principles will probably be around for a long time, it’s important to identify when they might need some adjustments.
Enterprise user experience design is a bit more traditional, but these boundaries actually encourage us to be more creative. Working within these limits gives us the chance to make the future of work more exciting and full of potential. For a comprehensive guide on selecting the right UI/UX designer for your project, visit ui design outsourcing.