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Surviving Your UX Career in Enterprise Design
Summary
If you’re just getting started in your UX career and find yourself in an enterprise environment, how can you face some of the unique challenges of practicing UX design? What if I'm not a domain expert in my new field? What happens if my team asks me to deliver something they want, but come up with something I think they really need? What if my organization doesn't have a good process for UX work? We'll discuss how to deliver professional work without all the resources at your disposal. Learn strategies to tap into your company’s people, processes, and data to shore up the quality of your UX practice.
Key Insights
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Enterprise UX designers often work outside their domain expertise and must quickly build knowledge through internal experts and customer-facing roles like support and sales.
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Maintaining a glossary of domain-specific jargon helps validate assumptions and align project terminology with user expectations.
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Delivering exactly what is asked, such as a simple checkbox, builds trust and respects team deadlines, even if you see opportunities for bigger improvements.
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Proposing larger redesigns as separate future ideas enables creative expression without jeopardizing immediate deliverables.
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Documenting UX processes and templates in a shared Wiki increases transparency and accelerates onboarding for new team members.
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Setting clear milestones with project plans and demonstrating past project timelines helps manage stakeholder expectations around delivery speed.
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Early and frequent solicitation of candid negative feedback prevents shipping subpar designs and reduces costly fixes later.
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UX designers act as connective tissue in enterprise teams by educating stakeholders, facilitating collaboration, and bridging knowledge gaps.
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Explaining the rationale behind design decisions (the why) fosters understanding and reduces defensiveness among stakeholders.
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Measuring success in enterprise UX includes customer satisfaction, usage metrics, and tracking complaints to prioritize impactful fixes.
Notable Quotes
"Start knocking on doors immediately. There are people at your company who are domain experts and it’s your job to find them."
"Your fresh eyes are actually an asset. Question why things are done a certain way and what jargon means."
"If someone asks you for a cup of coffee, here’s the cup of coffee. You did it. But always have proposals on the side for more."
"Bad news does not improve with age. As soon as you get a whiff that something isn’t right, jump and fix it."
"Give a why of why you’ve made this design decision. It helps your team understand and reduces defensiveness."
"You are a contractor for your team. They want to know when the thing is done and that you delivered thoroughly."
"Designing in enterprise means facilitating conversations and educating your teams because many stakeholders don’t speak design."
"Tracking complaints and fixing things immediately, even if it’s just one person, is a mark of good UX impact."
"Create a UX brief with meetings and milestones so your PM knows where they need to be involved and where they don’t."
"Leading your path through ambiguity as a designer sometimes means teaching younger PMs how to work with you."
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