Rethinking User experience: Developing Smart Apps that Transform Outworn Enterprises into ‘Engaging Workplace’!

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The term ‘User Experience’ or ‘UX’ is common parlance in most product-based companies in the world today. In order to truly examine user experience, one must ask five basic questions-

• How engaging is it?
• How good it looks?
• How easy it is to use?
• How relevant it is to what users are doing?
• How fast is the response?

All these questions pertain to elements that contribute to a compelling experience, regardless of Industry Vertical, Line of Business (LoB) or Application Type. Though the subject of user experience has been around for years, the scope for UX development in enterprise apps has hardly seen the development and success that consumer-facing apps have experienced.

As the consumer app UX underwent a sea of change over the last two decades, enterprise applications and their experience have almost remained stagnant in the same period. Why is it that enterprise apps fail to provide the same engaging experience with the joy of work that consumer apps provide – Shouldn’t we do something about it? Making a lasting impact requires an entirely new way of thinking about enterprise app development.

1. The conceptualization of the app is required.
2. Developing structures that foster collaboration flawlessly.
3. Building the right internal team.

These three basic approaches become very important when thinking about developing an enterprise app. Now to deliver meaningful user experiences – timely involvement of the end-users becomes very important as opposed to the traditional software development techniques where project teams work in silos busy packing more and more features and ignoring the complexity of using the app. The app design and project teams need to discuss each and every interaction that the user has to make with the app.

Removing or improving user interactions has proven to enrich the overall experience multi-fold and add more meaning to where end-users spend their time. By having a holistic view of business process context, the kind of data that needs to be made available at every interaction by automating repetitive manual work – adds a lot in transforming the way end-users perceive enterprise applications.

As more and more businesses are starting to realize the potential and power of apps that provide great UX, organizations need applications for a new breed of workers – An enterprise software that works like the apps they use for personal use. Once this feasibility weighs in, end-users will start to make more and more decisions about what they want to get out of enterprise applications and how they want to experience these solutions. Smart apps like these will help customers see lower process turnaround times, reduced training time and increase satisfaction among their employees.