Navigating the challenges in enterprise UX design

Most UX designers start their software product design journey by designing consumer products like movie recommendation apps, online product stores, and task managers for general user audiences. However, designers sometimes have to create high-quality interfaces for large, complex software systems used by corporate professionals, known as enterprise software.

Enterprise software systems usually help companies digitize manual operations in healthcare, finance, marketing, education, scientific, and computer domains. Because enterprise system designs are bound to complex domain-specific business processes, UX designers often face challenges like balancing user productivity and complexity while designing better enterprise system interfaces for corporate professionals.

In this article, I’ll talk about what enterprise UX design is, differences compared to consumer UX, common design challenges, and best practices that help designers create better enterprise system interfaces.

What is enterprise UX design?

Enterprise UX design refers to the product design process of a software system used by corporate professionals. It’s also often known as an enterprise software system.

Enterprise system UIs work as a digital interface for a specific business company’s employees to access, store, and process business data. So, enterprise UX design usually creates a digital product interface based on manual business processes and cycles to help company employees contribute to day-to-day business operations productively via digital devices.

For example, look at the following Odoo ERP (enterprise resource planning) system interface that lets a corporate employee compare order lines in the procurement module:

Enterprise UX design follows the standard, general UX design process, but it contains additional stages to dive into business processes, scalable design, and user training.

Why is UX critical for enterprise software success?

Imagine what will happen if your bank’s central banking system doesn’t adhere well to UX practices. As a result, employees will become less productive with their tasks, causing customer satisfaction issues, and the banking system’s UX will finally affect your bank’s reputation.

In an enterprise system, employees do their day-to-day jobs, and managers gather information for decision-making, so UX-related issues slow everyone’s work. If the primary enterprise system offers better UX for every role, everyone can work productively without implementing alternative, bypassed processes themselves.

Good UX can drive every business process efficiently by improving the quality of the whole enterprise system.

How does enterprise UX differ from consumer UX?

Both enterprise and consumer UX design share common guidelines and processes, but they also have major differences due to differences in the audience and primary design goals.

The primary difference is that enterprise UX design focuses on building an efficient, high-quality product for a specific business domain or a process based on practical, real-world business workflows. On the other hand, consumer UX design focuses on building a usable and attractive product for the general user base to achieve a specific common task, such as creating a daily to-do list.

The following table list summarizes every visible difference between enterprise and consumer UX:

Enterprise UX	Consumer UX
Customers are not product end users — a customer is usually a company, and its employees become product end users	Customers (individuals) are end users
Designs based on complex business processes and practices to drive an enterprise entity’s process	Designs based on general user needs to do a specific day-to-day activity
Focuses on user productivity rather than simplicity, so interfaces look complex for general users	Focuses on simplicity over productivity to welcome anyone to the software interface
Users are corporate professionals who are familiar with role-specific business processes	Users are general users who understand general HCI (Human Computer Interaction)
New users are required to go through well-structured training or certification programs to adapt to the interface	New users can use the product interface instantly using their basic computer knowledge
UX process, release cycles usually become long due to the complex, domain-specific nature of the product	Fast UX process, shorter release cycles since any product stakeholder can understand user requirements and product design easily
Rarely uses interface aesthetics and artistic elements since functionality and usability are the most important factors	Often uses interface aesthetics and artistic elements to attract users and improve user-friendliness for everyone
Designed using modular patterns for better scalability, i.e., a hospital management system has several consistent module interfaces, so designers can easily introduce a new module inheriting existing module UX	Offers a single module/product interface focusing on a single primary task, i.e., Spotify focuses on playing music for users

 

Let’s look at a practical example to understand the differences between these two UX design fields.

See how the Open Hospital hospital management system uses basic UI controls with domain-specific filtering options with a somewhat complex layout:

 

See how the Airbnb website implements simple filtering options with eye-catching graphical elements:

As you can see, enterprise systems prioritize functionality and productivity over simplicity and friendliness to help employees do their tasks efficiently and accurately.

Stages of enterprise UX design

The enterprise UX design typically follows the same well-known standard UX design process, which includes definition, research, analysis, design, and test stages. However, the enterprise design process focuses more on the following stages due to the domain-specific requirements and enterprise-oriented nature:

User research in enterprise environments

The general user research process helps UX designers understand users’ behaviors and requirements to identify user expectations in the product interface. Enterprise systems typically have to offer digital solutions for complex business processes — so enterprise UX design involves mapping complex business requirements to visual features and workflows.

In a consumer software project, there may be no business analysts, or UX designers may not frequently collaborate with existing business analysts. However, enterprise systems are complex and heavily domain-specific, so UX designers have to collaborate with business analysts to prepare effective specifications during user research and analysis.

Here are several tasks that a UX designer should do in user research of an enterprise software system:

• Understand business processes and design optimal low-fidelity prototypes by using both domain information and general UX principles
• Work collaboratively with business analysts and stakeholders to identify complete business processes and hidden workflows that employees perform
• Identify user roles and their abilities. In most business systems, higher user roles have access to a large subset of the whole business process, and lower user roles have limited access. So, UX designers should design interfaces based on those permission levels to define user flows

Design for scalability

Unlike a consumer software system’s workflows, an enterprise software system has complex, interconnected user flows based on real-world business processes. Some workflows become a part of a large process. Meanwhile, some workflows are similar and can be designed with shared and UX definitions. Moreover, users may request to create a new workflow similar to an existing, implemented one.

So, UX designers typically design the enterprise system with scalability in mind based on the following actions:

• Identify what entities or sections can be used to modularize the entire system interface with better scalability factors, i.e., modularizing an ERP system based on theoretical ERP modules like sales, HR, etc.
• Identifying reusable workflows that the design can have without implementing duplicated workflows

Long-term engagement and adoption

Enterprise system users are typically corporate professionals who stay in the same organization for a long time, so enterprise UX designers have more time to help product users fully adopt the new system than consumer software designers.

UX designers can plan physical or virtual meetings with product users to initialize product engagement and create a good first impression. Product designers can bias training programs to the HCI aspect since product users (company employees) are already familiar with the actual business process.

Similar to consumer software products, designers can build a long-term bond with users by monitoring interactions and asking for user feedback. Some enterprise systems speed up the system adoption process with in-app product intros and feedback forms:

Once UI designers create high-fidelity designs based on the results of the above stages, they should consider accessibility factors since enterprise software is often used in industry environments (e.g., product manufacturing lines) and by busy employees who can’t spend much time playing with the mouse/keyboard, reading small text, or inspecting hard-to-find segments on the screen.

What are the challenges in enterprise UX design?

The reality is that designing an enterprise system is not as easy as designing consumer software products — that’s why most UX job roles that involve complex enterprise systems are paid more than general UX job roles.

Let’s explore the challenges that UX designers face during enterprise design stages and how to solve them with various strategies:

Balancing complexity and usability

Enterprise system users need more efficient, productive interfaces than consumer product users. Enterprise system users usually look toward task completion, so designers should reduce the number of clicks and keystrokes needed to complete a specific task.

So, we can’t use UI/UX techniques like artistic wizards, futuristic UI components, or multiple popover regions since they affect enterprise user usability factors. In manufacturing industries, some users even prefer working only with the keyboard due to the work environment reasons, so it’s challenging to effectively use UI/UX practices to reduce the complexity of the screen.

As a result, most enterprise software looks complex for general users but offers maximum productivity for domain-specific users. Since reduced complexity affects usability in enterprise systems, we can use effective grouping, interface modularizing, auto-filling/pre-filling, and auto-expanding-like UI/UX techniques to reduce complexity without affecting usability.

Designing for multiple roles

Unlike simple consumer software, enterprise software should implement multiple roles for employees. In most scenarios, enterprise software interfaces show/hide modules, sections, and actions based on roles or permissions, creating multiple variants of the base enterprise system. Sometimes, enterprise system processes have to be paused until several roles approve a specific flow.

Moreover, the UX research analysis phase becomes complex since designers have to create user flows for multiple roles.

Due to these logical scenarios, designing for multiple roles becomes a hard task. Complex enterprise system designers use the following strategies to solve multiple-role design challenges:

• Handling the presentation layer based on permissions bound to roles — not solely upon roles. This approach creates a dynamic, scalable role model for the entire product. i.e., switching UI based on the view sales orders permission instead of the sales manager role since other roles can also view sales orders
• Creating secondary roles for primary job roles to share roles between primary roles, i.e., attaching sales manager and HR manager secondary roles for the primary general manager role
• Managing prototypes with switches to enable each visual section for specific roles rather than creating and maintaining different views or pages for each role

User onboarding and training

In consumer software, product designers don’t have to create detailed documentation or in-app explanations since the product’s tasks and primary goal are self-explanatory for users.

However, enterprise software is domain-specific and complex. Also, due to modularization and indirect business flows, business processes are not completely visualized through enterprise apps. As a result, a new user has to put more effort into learning consumer software to get started with an enterprise system.

A new user has to go through a well-structured onboarding and training process to adapt properly to a new enterprise system. Business enterprise system users are not typically fluent in HCI aspects compared to the general tech-savvy modern audience who have better experiences with popular consumer software products, so they may face various challenges even learning UI interaction.

Enterprise system designers can plan the following strategies to make the onboarding and training processes smoother:

• Starting with a general introductory session focusing on HCI without diving much into business processes, i.e., explaining how to use input devices to do tasks efficiently in the system interface
• Refresh employees’ knowledge of business processes by showing each module and navigation. For this task, business analysts and designers can both do introductory sessions collaboratively by following discussion-style presentations
• Dividing the audience into role-based groups and conducting onboarding programs focused on specific roles to slowly get into business processes
• Mapping the business process and related UIs side-by-side during presentations and practical training sessions
• Including in-app tutorials, hints (i.e., pro-tips about keyboard shortcuts), and short explanations to boost the learning process
• Offering a sandboxed enterprise system clone to let users practice new features and letting employees access and learn final-stage prototypes

Handling legacy systems

Rewriting central legacy enterprise systems with modern UI/UX practices is undoubtedly expensive. Also, enterprise system downtime during major system upgrades critically affects customer satisfaction and business reputation since enterprise systems process so many transactions daily. As a result, most enterprise systems run decades on businesses without major UX or technical upgrades.

However, companies often have to integrate modern enterprise systems or modules with existing legacy systems. In these integration scenarios, designers may face challenges since legacy systems don’t adhere to modern UI/UX techniques properly:

• Most legacy systems follow the monolithic architectural pattern, so we can’t easily build a new frontend by reusing its live backend
• How can a smooth navigation experience be offered if the new enterprise system combines new and legacy system interfaces?

To solve these challenges, designers try to take behavioral features from legacy systems and alter them using modern UX for the new system interface, embed legacy system UI components directly within the new system with smooth navigation, and carefully modularize and design user flows in the new system to reduce interaction with legacy systems.

Long release cycles and change management

Designing enterprise systems is complex and time-consuming. On the other hand, enterprise system provider companies can’t allocate enough human resources for the product development process due to budget-related considerations. As a result, enterprise system UX, development, and release processes become slow compared to consumer products.

When release cycles become longer, the entire product development team has to properly track and manage changes.

Handling long release cycles and change management is challenging, but proper use of project management tools helps us smooth these tasks. For example, creating well-defined Jira tasks with related sub-tasks focusing on UX designers and mapping them based on release milestones is a better technique for managing changes in long release cycles.

Long-release cycles-based product development also makes the UX handover process complex, so using a Zeplin-like design delivery system helps us reduce pain points in longer UX design processes:

Best practices for enterprise UX design

We can undoubtedly use general UX practices and strategies to improve the UX of any enterprise system interface.

But given the domain-specific complex nature of enterprise systems, we can also use the following enterprise-system-specific UX practices for designing employee productivity-focused high-quality HCI in product interfaces:

• Prioritize employee productivity over the simplicity of the product interface. Enterprise systems usually show complex forms with proper grouping and simple styles to reduce clicks without using wizard-based forms
• Visualize business processes if possible, i.e., showing the history of a specific product order in a manufacturing ERP software interface using a visual graph structure
• Adding in-app documentation and tutorials to help new users get started with the product faster
• Decomposing the product interface into separate apps, interfaces, or sections based on the separation of business processes
• Strive to pre-fill data and use reasonable default values to let employees complete tasks faster (even a proper element focus saves a busy employee’s time)
• Interconnect every module with in-app navigation without breaking user flows or clearing data that users entered
• Implementing keyboard shortcuts to help users stay on the keyboard since enterprise systems often capture data from the keyboard in most activities

The following best practices help us simplify the enterprise design UX process:

• Doing user research by collaborating with business analysts to understand hidden flows and practices in the business process. Also, designers can collaborate with the customer support team to identify user pain points efficiently without spending time on another user interview. Cross-departmental collaboration helps designers boost productivity during user research and analysis
• Plan for frequent feature demonstrations, meetings, and shorter UX design cycles since longer release cycles can reduce communication opportunities between stakeholders
• Effectively use project management software like Jira by optimally using their features
• Help developers do progressive feature rollout by sending complete designs of segments in proper order during design handoff

Designers can focus on implementing the following practices to improve the enterprise system in the long run:

• Creating detailed, up-to-date, accurate documentation, planning training programs, and introducing certifications for a smooth onboarding and product adoption
• Never ignore any negative user feedback — every negative feedback refers to a real struggling situation faced by an employee. Tracking user requests and suggestions in a help desk app is a practical approach for forming a strong bond with users. Designers can indeed create tasks based on help desk requests if needed
• Research and implement modern UX principles that improve user productivity without altering current workflows. i.e., implementing infinity scroll in lists
• Managing an internal knowledge base with UX research findings, decisions, and prototypes for future UX designers who will work with the project

Conclusion

This article explored enterprise UX design by understanding its importance, stages, and differences between general consumer software UX. We focused on enterprise UX design challenges and learned best practices to create better UX for enterprise system users.

Enterprise systems typically drive complex digitized business processes, and busy employees perform their daily jobs using enterprise system interfaces, so creating a productive, domain-focused UX in enterprise systems becomes crucial work for UX designers.

To avoid user frustration and maintain the company’s reputation, designers should prioritize productivity and system functionality over simplicity of design and extra aesthetics, unlike simple consumer software interfaces used by general users.

The success of the enterprise system interface depends on the quality, effectiveness, and collaboration of the enterprise UX design process.

So, UX designers should effectively drive the enterprise UX process by carefully understating user feedback and collaborating with business analysts, customer support representatives, and other stakeholders.