Enterprise tools are ugly, hard to use, and nobody cares. Or do they?
2,000 people use the tool I work on every single day to do their job. They care. And they deserve better. I bet you have users like that too. Users you keep deprioritizing because “it’s internal.”
I’ll take you through a real case study: the full redesign of an 18-year-old enterprise tool. Research methods, design decisions, change management, the mistakes we made: what actually worked, and didn’t work. I’ll share why I actually enjoy working in Enterprise UX, what surprised me when I started, and how to grow in such environments.
You’ll leave with concrete ideas and methods to bring back to your own projects. And ways to handle messy constraints.
Walk away learnings:
– A research approach for complex internal tools, from server log analysis to diary studies and observational testing
– Practical ways to build a continuous research community
– A method to prioritize what to redesign first, balancing user needs, business value, and dev effort
– A better understanding of when to simplify, and when complexity is actually the right answer
– Ideas to build allies inside IT-driven organizations and make design visible and valued
