Defining BETTER for Enterprise vs Consumer Product (Focus UX)
User Experience is not just a new buzz word, but it is a decision-making factor now. Gone those days when user interaction was a good to have feature. Now even for your MVP, you have to think through your users and how will they interact with design thoroughly.
Design thinking is become an integral part of sprints now. People are now, actively thinking not only about what problems we are solving for users’ problems but also how well are we solving it. For me, it just a because of competitive products available for the users with literally no as low cost to switch between the products. I do not blame the users. When two products provide same solution to same problem, user will definitely choose a cheaper, faster or better product. This ‘better’ is what you can achieve with defining and designing user interactions with your product.
There is a clear improvement in UX for Consumers Apps over a decade. Web-applications, mobile applications have improved significantly to leverage hardware capabilities for its users to ensure easier interactions. Be it ordering food or depositing your check has never been so quicker before. Now UX for enterprise products is getting better recently and has a huge opportunity evolve further.
As a product manager, here are some key differentiating factors between consumer UX vs enterprise UX I have observed over the years.
1. User Skill Set — When you design for consumers users, you really have to design for everyone. Having a target persona helps understanding who your user is going to be and the skills (technical or functional) she may possess to interact with your App. When you work on Apps like Gmail or Facebook or Citibank, you have to consider people of all ages and skillsets interacting with it. Enterprise App makes it easier for you. Based on the target persona, you would know who will use your product. That helps you to have certain assumptions on the skillset. Your target users can be Accountants, Developers, Data Analysts etc. You have to consider the technical as well as functional skill level before you design for them. Creating a user support groups, training certification and troubleshoot resources become as important as designing the UX.
2. Motivation Level — Consumer user selects an App and uses for her own need. I would define that motivation as intrinsic motivation. Here, you know that users have a certain need and you have market your product as an App that would satisfy that need. Consumer users, then will use your product for their own benefit. Whereas an Enterprise App is trying to make enterprise users’s work easier or faster, so you really need to understand what all deliverables your user has. Enterprise users will interact with your App because most like that enterprise platform has been chosen for them by their organization to deliver a set of asks. So always remember that a consumer user picks her own App, whereas enterprise user not always has a say in picking which platform they want to use. So, the motivation of enterprise user is extrinsic. You have to work extra hard to make sure to add value to enterprise users day to day work life.
3. Time to Switch to Other App — This one is another important factor behind design UX for enterprise. Usually, decision to implement a product at organization level is a big and complex decision. It requires a lot of approvals, cost and effort to move to another platform. Organizations also have to think about time and cost of the training that they may have to provide before implementing a new enterprise product. Whereas the consumer users make their own decisions to use or switch to another App, they do not have to go through an approval process or training to use another product. Considering the cost and time to switch, the on boarding experience for both these users hence needs to be different.
4. Complexity of App — Enterprise Apps are complex in terms of information and functionality they offer. While creating user flows, product managers must think of organizing and grouping this information to support these user flows. The focus of these Apps should be to create intuitive, self-serving and focused user flows. Consumer Apps normally are simpler, and focus is to have simpler user flows.
5. Product Success — Consumer Apps can have various business goals. They can use creative ways to monetize them by showing adds, sharing user data and providing other incentives. But Enterprise Apps have to be very sensitive about user data and other data in the application. They really have aligned their motorization model to enterprise user’s deliverables. Enterprise Apps have to be really good in delivering value to its users to ensure user engagement and growth
