Business News

GUEST BLOG: Four UX considerations for designing enterprise applications

By Business & Finance
28 June 2016
apps eheçåtzin

By Ella Mason, freelance writer

In this democratic world of ours where equality is supposed to rule, it would be nice to think the design of every application is equally important.

That an application intended for use by 80 grad students is just as essential and worthwhile as an application intended for a corporation.

But of course, that is not how it works. Not only does money talk, but it can yell, and so too can frustrated users. And if you’re going to have frustrated users on your hands, better to have 80 angry grad students complaining on a university message board than the thousands upon thousands of users that can become enraged by a disappointing enterprise application. This may be rude, and it may be lazy, but it’s also unimpeachable logic.

As security firm Incapsula says in their guide to user experience (UX) in enterprise applications, successful enterprise applications have to be easy to use, accessible and eye-catching.

Here are four of the UX considerations to keep in mind in order to achieve all of those things:

1. Who your users are

This is one of those points that seems like it should be so obvious that it sometimes goes overlooked. Talented designers can get so caught up in the excitement of making something new and slick, in breaking the mould and pushing boundaries that the actual purposes of the application can get left behind.

And in enterprise applications (and, well, most applications) one of the main purposes has to be providing a good user experience.

Once you understand who your users are, what demographics they fall into and their backgrounds, for example, you can begin to understand their needs and expectations in regards to your application, and then you can begin to design to meet them. Keep in mind that not only should you be designing to meet the needs and expectations of current users, but of future users as well.

Enterprise applications need to have excellent UX, of course, making a user’s interactions with the interface easy and effective, but it also needs to have excellent customer experience (CX) as well. CX encompasses all of the interactions a user has with the brand, which ranges from the application’s appearance to the customer support a user receives. If a component of your application reflects on the brand it’s representing, it has to be impeccable.

2. How you want users to feel

This isn’t nearly as general as it seems, so quash any eye-rolling impulse you may be feeling. Yes, you want users to be happy. You don’t want them to be angry. But actually designing enterprise applications to instil specific feelings in users goes deeper than that.

Incapsula experts explain that the desired emotional state of enterprise application users usually fall into one of the following categories:

  • Control, which is when users want to feel as though they are directing the application
  • Power, which is when users want to feel as though they are actually affecting change by using the application
  • Pride, which is when users want to feel as though their application is better than other similar applications
  • Assurance, which is when users want to feel as though they are using a secure application that is performing as it is supposed to
  • Accomplishment, which is when users want to feel as though the application is helping them achieve their goals

When designing enterprise applications, there should be nothing you welcome more than criticism

Users on a banking application, for instance, would want to feel assurance, while users on a fitness tracking app would likely want to feel accomplishment. When you determine how the majority of users will want to feel while using the enterprise application you design, you can gear the UX towards that emotion.

3. How users are going to behave

How a user is expected to complete a task on the application is called a scenario. Scenarios are helpful for designers in that they allow the designer to visualise how a user may interact with a feature.

The calm and simple structure of these sentences explaining scenarios completely belies how convoluted scenarios can actually become.

When putting together a scenario, a designer has to be incredibly thorough. All of the information from your first two considerations can be handily employed during the scenario forming process, as can insights into user knowledge, user goals, user needs, technology and limitations.

Knowing how your users are likely to react to situations and the steps they are likely to take to complete tasks not only helps with UX but also user interface (UI), as every action in a scenario will become a UI element.

You may want to consider task analysis in order to determine if your users have the skills necessary to complete a task in your application.

Ella Mason

Ella Mason

4. Why your application isn’t great

When designing enterprise applications, there should be nothing you welcome more than criticism. Unless it’s coffee. But you really do want a lot of criticism and a lot of feedback, because the more you get during the design process, the less you’ll get once the application has launched.

Testing and feedback is essential for every stage of the design process (and the development process, but that’s not the topic at hand). You should be welcoming feedback on the paper sketch of your design, the high-fidelity prototype, and the application itself. So thicken that skin and tell your user volunteers to hit you where it hurts: your enterprise application related pride.

The headaches, overtime, long nights and hissy fits of the enterprise application design process aren’t exactly things you’re ever going to look forward to, but if you take these UX considerations seriously, your pain and suffering may largely be over once you’ve launched.

Photo (main): eheçåtzin

About the blogger

Ella Mason is an experienced freelance writer.

She specialises in providing useful and engaging advice to small businesses.

Follow her on Twitter here.