Many companies stress the importance of user experience for their employees' professional and even personal development. Different reasons such as the subjectivity of user experience or the extension of waiting times at the computer can reduce work performance or disrupt the work process. More and more companies have decided to implement technologies that enhance the UX culture and, consequently, improve employee engagement. If a user interface is not intuitively designed, it not only leads to poor UX but also reduces motivation.

They say that poor and suboptimal user interface could signal to your coworkers that their time and commitment are not valuable. On the other hand, managers often ask themselves why people find it difficult to accept changes in the operational process. The answer to both problems could be that poor user experience can be a root cause of reduced work quality and adaptability.

UX deployment can:

• create internal customer satisfaction

• understand and solve users' problems

• optimize training effort

What challenges can your company master with a UX-based strategy?

Transparency and active communication through an intuitive user interface

Transparent work and active communication throughout the company help to promote a sense of personal responsibility. However, transparency works not only by making all information available to everyone but rather by involving colleagues in the discussion. A platform that is trusted by employees and therefore easy to use must be a priority here. For example, if colleagues feel familiar with how the internal software works, you foster an environment in which searching for information and forwarding it to colleagues is easy. In this way, everyone feels a greater sense of belonging to the company and its goals. Another considerable plus is that you can bring more reluctant employees to the dialogue table.

Making work effective through a pleasant user experience

A clear user interface with a clear purpose will improve UX. Not only a nice colour scheme is important here, but rather the design, style and structure of the website elements that should be adapted to user needs. In the area of corporate design, the statement 'less is more' still applies. This will not only make the website lighter and easier to navigate, but also get the employees to the desired information faster.

Interaction and integration for optimized IT efforts

If the internal apps allow employees to really interact with colleagues and managers, they are much more likely to feel that they belong to the company. By offering a UX that is easily accessible from cell phones, tablets, and desktops, you can be sure that employees will really engage with your enterprise IT solutions. Even when introducing a UX-optimized app, the training effort can be reduced to a minimum through intuitive operating concepts. Decreasing support efforts can also be observed in IT service: the time and effort required for the employment of Key Users or for support with non-ergonomic software is reduced with optimized UI.

The first step towards modern collaboration

By using UX methods and a friendly internal user interface, the company's goals are aligned with modern collaboration tactics. This enables the optimal completion of tasks and an increase in employee motivation. Next steps should be integrating more collaboration platforms, remote meetings or real-time communication with colleagues.

If you engage your colleagues with great UX, not only will the working environment become more pleasant, but UX will also make work faster and more qualitative. It also reduces training, IT effort and therefore costs. Not to be neglected is the impact on employee retention. Ensuring that UX makes work possible is the solution for greater operational efficiency and employee satisfaction.

Methods and approaches to improve usability

An important question is: why doesn't every company improve its systems if scalability or new monitoring and overview possibilities can be achieved?

First and foremost, the importance of UX in digital products is well known, but many decision-makers, even if they are aware of organizational or work problems, cannot estimate how to deal with them via UX. Although it is not easy to measure usability, it is possible to perform content analysis of tickets, SAT surveys, complaint emails from employees to identify the most important pain points.

Below you can find two methods and approaches for improving internal systems:

Document user behaviour

Each feature must pass several rounds of usability testing. It is valuable to know that a form suffers from usability problems, but it is even more important to be aware that the user had difficulties in getting to the form. The difference between an experienced user and an inexperienced user can also be a valuable input. Make sure you test both, ask questions, and designs should be discussed with the target audience before they are implemented. Always ask which are the unclear features of the system and which are the user's needs. Listen carefully and document all feedback. Employee interviews focus groups or surveys are practical tools for collecting feedback.

Define measurable goals

For each new functionality, you should define measurable goals. The goal is to meet a certain percentage of user acceptance. Employee reviews can help here: if the employees themselves can discover the feature or if they give positive feedback to the manager, this means that the goals of modernization have been achieved.

The importance of usability

As a practical example of the importance of usability, Accesa has implemented a software solution to increase usability & scalability for a German manufacturer and distributor of laboratory equipment. The usability issues of the app led to problems such as low and expensive long-term maintenance, a counter-intuitive software design embedded in old technology frameworks and a difficulty in implementing modern features. By working with an agile Scrum methodology, we identified the solutions and technologies that would ensure the long-term usability of the software.

With the help of 20 development & testing specialists and technologies such as .Net, C#, WPF, Spring.NET, C++ standard library, NUnit and Moq, our teams have implemented a unique, workflow-based and modular software whose design power enables users to operate with the software at maximum capacity.