issues, the usability tool issues accounted for only a small proportion ( 11 percent) of the total issues identified. The overall identified issues were distributed across all aspects, including system, tool, configuration, performance, or user help. Obviously, if we fixed just some of these issues, we still wouldn’t be able to significantly enhance the overall UX. Furthermore, the traditional user centered design (UCD) approach, which focuses mainly on tool usability, had difficulties in meeting these challenges. As a result, the usability expert proposed a UXD approach to Phase 2, which was successfully released in the third quarter of 2006. The overall UX improvement for one major module was ranked ninth best among 102 U.S. corporations in the 2007 Top Employer Web Benchmark by Potentialpark Communications.
A complete UXD approach consists of the following:
• Form a UX team. The UX team includes representatives from different functional teams across quality assurance, business process, TCM, training/ online help, and user support. The usability expert can serve as facilitator of the UXD process and maintain a partnership with other teams by working with these representatives on the UX team. Each of those UX team members owns the planning and execution of the UX component corresponding to their functional area.
• Include the usability expert with program management. In order to keep track of the UXD progress and increase visibility of UXD work, the usability expert should be a member of program management. This differs from traditional UCD, wherein
a usability expert is typically embedded within the program as a member of a sub-team.
• Define a UX scorecard and the tracking process. The UX scorecard should define not only success criteria for tool usability design, but also other aspects of UX. A tracking process needs to be defined across the lifecycle of a program, which will enable program management to closely monitor the progress of UXD and take any necessary actions. Besides, the UX scorecard and tracking process also increase the overall awareness of a UXD culture within the program.
• Follow a UX data-driven approach for optimizing business processes. Gather real end-user data; for example, through iterative usability testing, as business processes evolve. For instance, a vanilla solution may require three sub-business processes (legal process for approval) in addition to the existing business process. Testing the impact of these changes can help determine the right trade-off between the UX and business processes.
• Strategically collaborate with the supplier. Leverage usability test data to convince the supplier to fix high-priority usability issues. This is especially relevant in the case of OTS solutions. Getting recommendations embedded into purchased solutions avoids many of the costs and inefficiencies associated with enterprise software.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
• Develop a partnership with enterprises and adopt an enterprise-participate design approach (for example, conduct field studies in the enterprises’ workplace).
• Adopt the UXD approach; select target end users for usability studies.
• Set up a user group that includes enterprise members for regular communication of new design and feedback gathering from enterprises.
• Influence their design.
• Consider UX when selecting a supplier to foster suppliers’ UX culture.
• Build an in-house UX team or leverage external consulting.
• Provide post-release feedback to supplier on time and influence improvements of future releases.
• Set up an industry consortium and develop industry standards to foster an industrywide UX culture.
March + April 2009
Case Study: Supplier Influence One of Intel’s early forays into enterprise software involved a web-based purchasing system for general use. Preliminary usability
testing demonstrated considerable difficulty for users, high error rates, and low satisfaction ratings. Several iterations of the system were developed and put through usability testing, and distinct improvements emerged in the Intel-customized version. At the user-interface level, as much data entry as possible was consolidated into a main screen, and controls and labels were altered to match user expectations. At the user-interaction level, warnings were put in place to prevent users from mistakenly losing their data, for instance by navigating away
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