Taming Design Complexity with UX Models
Summary
Enterprise UX is incredibly complex and nuanced. Robert Reimann is the Senior Manager, UX Design at athenahealth, and in his talk at EUX 2017 he discusses how to improve the enterprise software user experience.
Key Insights
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Enterprise software often prioritizes corporate goals over individual user needs, leading to poor user experiences.
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Designing and scaling enterprise software is exceptionally complex, more so than consumer products.
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Personas remain highly valuable in enterprise UX when based on rigorous user research and tailored to roles and skills.
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Two-tiered persona models—broad suite-level and detailed module-level—help manage complexity and scope.
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Non-user personas, including customers (buyers) and served personas, must be considered in enterprise design, especially in healthcare.
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Data ecology and activity sequence models visualize how data flows and are critical for understanding user interactions with systems.
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Organizational models reflecting formal and informal behaviors, as well as corporate culture, greatly impact the success of enterprise systems.
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Different organizational cultures (clan, ad-hocracy, controlled, market) require distinct types of enterprise software support.
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Concept maps are powerful tools for mapping complex objects and relationships in enterprise systems and beyond.
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System models serve as a human-readable bridge between stakeholders and engineers, enabling alignment on system mechanics.
Notable Quotes
"Even with decades of UX thinking, many enterprise systems still feel stuck in the past and don’t deliver on their promises."
"Enterprise software mainly serves corporate goals but rarely serves people goals very well within the products."
"Designing enterprise software is not just complicated to use, it’s really complicated to design."
"Personas that aren’t based on customer data may ruin your product — that’s especially true in enterprise contexts."
"In enterprise products, personas are closely related to roles and skills, but user research is essential to understand needs."
"You need two tiers of personas: broad roles at the suite level and detailed flavors at the module level."
"Organizational DNA includes formal behaviors like policies and informal ones like communication styles that software must match."
"Corporate culture types—clan, ad-hocracy, control, compete—shape what software tools will succeed or fail."
"Concept maps are the best tool for managing complex webs of objects and relationships in a system."
"System models provide a human-readable level above the database, enabling stakeholder alignment on complex features."
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