Enterprise software, also known as enterprise software application (ESA), is purposed-designed computer software used to satisfy the needs of an organization rather than individual users.
We recently enrolled in a “designer lite” onsite course at leading Business Process Management (BPM) vendor’s location. It had been quite a while since I was a student in such as class--usually I’ve been the one teaching classes. It was nice to be in the passenger seat this time and see via their established curriculum the development environment for their BPM.
Ralph Nadar's book Unsafe At Any Speed raised public awareness of some of the safety problems associated with the Chevrolet Corvair. Nadar’s book, however, was also an indictment of the auto industry as a whole and served as a lightning rod for legislation establishing what would eventually become the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA).
These two industries, HealthIT and automobiles have quite a lot in common including that they are both highly regulated. These regulations exist because in both industries poor design can lead to safety issues and the possible death of their user’s.
Over the past several years we have had the opportunity to work with companies of various sizes as they plan and redesign their web presence. Some began using a CMS for the first time, while others were transitioning from either an open-source system (WP, Drupal, etc.) or some homegrown system to a more robust complete CMS solution (Adobe CQ5, Sitecore, Sharepoint, etc).
We’ve worked with these organizations to help them better understand the mental models of their “End Users” so that together we could design a system that is effective, efficient and satisfying. But who are these “End Users?” One common thread that we’ve noticed is that a majority of these organizations seemed to forget about a number of “end users” by focusing exclusively on the experience of visitors to their sites and their customers.
Don’t get us wrong, we think that it is vital to understand, and design towards the understanding of visitors and customers. We often create personas that help drive that design conversation.
What we are saying is that most of the organizations that we’ve worked with never completely thought about all of the user touch-points they need to consider.
It was a pleasure to work with you, as you and your team made this process a more pleasant experience for our team and the participants.
Karen Perry
I just want to tell you that I value people relations more than money. I remember how you were friendly and helpful not going against policies and contractual obligations at the same time, not using your power to make us feel stupid and small. It was a very rare and big experience for me. Really. I will always remember this.
Alex
The Usability People are all individuals that you can become friends with very easily. They have a lot of different interests and are a pleasure to work with. I was writing a PRD/MRD for a billing solution and worked with The Usability People in defining the user interface. They are receptive to ideas and are able to mold the user interface from an end-user's perspective. I really liked the idea of putting end-user photograph & short biography around the office to help understand the users
