Enterprise UX: Designing user experience for better business
In HCI Korea workshop 2017
(This is a summary of the presentation on enterprise UX design which we gave at the HCI Korea 2017 conference.)
Enterprise UX advocates to internal tools for business operation
“Enterprise UX” is a term referring to the design profession specialised for internal tools that are used by employees, rather than consumers, in the process of business operation. In this presentation, we discuss the benefits that the enterprise UX perspective brings to UX design practice and some of the considerations that would lead to better practice of designing business solutions.
The term “Enterprise UX” has become popular in the design community and across professions regarding digital transformation of businesses now that a few cases have made huge impacts on the markets. Salesforce, for example, has become known as one of the most successful B2B businesses by offering customer-relationship management (CRM) software that is “as easy as buying a book on Amazon.” From the past efforts to bring out the best user experience in business solutions across various business and technology domains, we reach the answer to the question “What is a good enterprise UX design?” In addition, throughout the discourse we also noticed that the spectrum of UX design's contribution to business can be widened with the enterprise UX perspective.
Good enterprise UX assists users in decision making throughout the work process
UX design intends to deliver a simple, intuitive and pleasurable experience with a product. The intention of enterprise UX design is not very different from that of UX design for customers. However, the ultimate value that it strives to offer users and clients throughout that experience is somewhat different from that of customer-oriented designs.
Both designs’ ultimate purpose is to help businesses become more successful. Customer UX design might achieve that goal by inducing users to push a certain button or locking users into service cycles. However, employees’ roles in business entails making decisions that are needed in those stages of business procedures. Accordingly, we can conclude that the purpose of enterprise UX is to help users make correct decisions with assistance that is offered through intuitive and easy-to-use use flows.
What problem do you see from the picture? Usability of the machines or other issue in work process
A case study of McDonald’s self-ordering machines
We suggested a case study of McDonald’s transformation, in which it adopted self-ordering kiosks in its locations in Korea. The press mentioned that the transformation’s purpose was to reduce the cost of hiring cashiers and reallocate the returns to customer-facing services. However, the quality of service in the Korean locations dropped with the adoption of the machines. From the perspective of enterprise UX, we analysed the problem and noticed interesting findings.
The cashiers in stores receive orders from customers, and they can moderate the speed with which they do so. Therefore, they can control the pace of orders and help the staff serve food as they monitor the store’s status. But the machines cannot adjust the pace, so if the stores are too crowded, the kitchen staff easily becomes overwhelmed by the overflowing orders, and orders are eventually delayed. Accordingly, from the viewpoint of enterprise UX design, just rolling out a self-ordering machine is not the best option. Instead, McDonald’s should have considered supporting staff when making decisions to manage a store’s work flow more efficiently.
This case study shows that enterprise UX design’s focus on a problem is slightly different from that of customer UX design, and it reveals another benefit that UX design can contribute for business.
UX design is also about making business processes effective and efficient
From the viewpoint of enterprise UX, we can conclude that carrying out a business process efficiently is another big responsibility of UX design because a business can be sustainable only when it is effective. If a business fails to succeed, it also fails to satisfy users. Efficiency doesn’t necessarily refer only to financial efficiency. It could refer to general comparison of inputs and outputs. For example, we can think of a service that is efficiently implemented to gain useful user data with the least manpower or computing resources. Accordingly, enterprise UX widens the scope and spectrum of UX design’s contribution to business.
in CHI 2015 (Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems)
Abstract
The evolution of SNS applications has focused on the increasing pace of communication. Accordingly, adopting pause moment design for the SNS domain becomes significant, considering its worth for mental well-being and diversity of experience. Nonetheless, the vision is currently controversial, as it is lacking in attempts to examine the worth of pause moment design for SNS communication. Therefore, we discussed the benefits of pause moment design as an SNS application, based on the case of Ripening Room. From observation, we have identified three benefits of pause moment design; preserving room for solitude, expanding time experience, and providing additional indirect cues for communication. Nevertheless, the benefits also imply limitations of the current design, thus require following attempts to adopt a pause moment design for the SNS domain.
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Ripening Room: Designing Social Media for Self-reflection in Self-expression
in DIS 2014 (ACM conference on Designing interactive systems) At Vancouver, BC, Canada / 5 Citation
Abstract
This study proposed some considerations for designing social media to encourage self-reflection of users, referring to rationales of exemplary case, Ripening Room. Ripening Room provides ripening time, a delay period between the time of writing and sharing posts, and a ripening score to evaluate users' self-reflection. To give insights for the design a preliminary exploration was conducted on university students about their perceptions and experience of self-reflection in social media. To evaluate the effect of Ripening Room's design, an empirical study on Ripening Room was conducted. Participants mentioned that the features of Ripening Room inspired them to self-reflect upon their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. From the findings of the empirical study, further implications were suggested.
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Selective Visual Attention Occurred in Change Detection Derived by Animacy of Robot's Appearance
in CTS (IEEE international conference on Collaborative Technologies and Systems) 2011 At Philadelphia, PA, USA/ 7 Citation
Abstract
To investigate whether or not visual cognition allots more attention to robots with animate or inanimate forms, a change detection experiment was conducted for three types of robot appearance; anthropomorphic, zoomorphic and inanimate forms. Subjects detected changes more quickly in animate (anthropomorphic / zoomorphic) robots than their inanimate counterparts. This indicates that the domain-specificity of visual cognition allocates a different level of visual attention depending on robots' external appearances, and biotic features of robots' external appearances attract visual attention more than abiotic forms. Although the range of selected cases is not enough to represent all robot forms and the the particular aspects of biotic appearance that affect visual cognition were not defined, this research can lead further consideration of the visual cognitive system for the appropriate and rational design of robot forms.
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The Effect of Politeness Strategy on Human-Robot Collaborative Interaction on Malfunction of Robot Vacuum Cleaner
in RSS’11 (Robotics Science and Systems) Workshop on Human-Robot Interaction, At Los Angeles, California, USA
Abstract
Malfunction of the robotic product is an unavoidable issue in the real world, while users want their robotic products to be perfect. A number of studies have been conducted within the realm of HRI to alleviate this problem, and one of the solutions has been founded as mitigating. According to the literature, dealing mostly with humanoid and social service robots, we consider how to mitigate malfunctions in non-humanoid and functional robots. By applying politeness strategies, specifically strategies of no politeness strategy, positive politeness strategy and negative politeness strategy, we aim to improve the negative consequences of a malfunction. We tested these strategies in an empirical study involving 34 participants. A malfunction of a functional robotic product has been regarded as the result of incompetence, but politeness strategies can reduce the negative impact of the malfunction. People's orientation toward the robot influenced politeness strategies. Those with a relational orientation were affected most by a positive politeness strategy, while those with a utilitarian orientation regarded no politeness strategy as best. We discuss functional robotic product designs that can mitigate malfunctions.
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