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
Supplier
• 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.
Enterprise
• 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.
Industry
• 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
