Usability as a key success factor for good business software
"Enterprise software often fails to meet expectations" - this is the title of a news report[1] published last week in the iX trade magazine for professional information technology. According to the aforementioned study by the consulting firm FleishmanHillard[2], developers of software for companies occupy last place in the innovation category.
One shortcoming is that new features and constant availability are advertised, but the user and their needs are neglected. For them, the focus is usually on customizability or intuitive usability, but this is often not fulfilled by the software.
Usability often falls by the wayside in the development process
One reason for this could be that the user has no place in the software development process. Companies plan the software with the marketing or sales departments and the developers. They consider what is needed on the market and often neglect a very important criterion for the success of software: usability.
Usability refers to the suitability of a product for use. To ensure this, test cycles are required as early as the development phase, in which suitable user groups test whether the product is easy to understand, quick to learn and efficient to use. However, this is often neglected due to short development cycles or budget savings. The assumption that you already know how dialogs in applications should function correctly and what is in demand on the market ends up costing you dearly. The software lacks the desired good user experience (UX). It works and can do what it is supposed to, but it doesn't "feel" good. Users are dissatisfied or, in the worst case, refuse to work with the application.
Involving users in solution development
At doubleSlash, we have been following the "human-centered design" approach for some time. An iterative design process is described in ISO 9241-210, which describes a user-oriented approach in development projects. It is important that the context of use is understood and the user requirements are derived from this. Once these components have been defined, design solutions are developed and evaluated by involving users. Only when the solution meets the usage requirements does it become part of the software.
Customer integration - also in software development
But at this point, the software is not yet finished. If the customer provides feedback that the solution does not meet expectations in the overall context, this valuable insight is fed back to development and becomes part of a subsequent release. In this way, we continuously improve our software in order to fully meet the requirements and expectations of our customers.
The comment "There's nothing more boring than developing business software"[3] appears once in the comments on the article. We see it very differently. For us, it is a welcome challenge to work together with the customer on their requirements in order to then develop ergonomic, efficient software with them and their users.
Hello Thobias,
I completely agree with you that usability is neglected in many cases. However, this is not really explainable, as the trend towards human-centered design has not just started today.
Perhaps it is the desire to deliver something perfect and perfection is seen in offering all conceivable functions?
The question is how much the user will accept compromises in complex applications in order to receive an application that is perhaps less extensive but more usable.
In my opinion, usability usually suffers as the complexity of software increases.
I think that German companies in particular often place too little value on good usability and more on functions. Wunderlist and a few other start-ups are perhaps an exception, but in general more attention is paid to functions than usability. In the Silicon Valley, on the other hand, people think much more from the customer's point of view and therefore the front-end UI of many web-based products from there is often very well solved and the companies score points even if they have fewer features, such as DropBox, Everbrite, AirBnB, etc. This will also increasingly become a purchasing criterion for business software. This can already be seen with Zendesk(http://www.zendesk.com) for helpdesk systems or Comindware(http://www.comindware.com/de/project/) for project management software and many others that score points with a good UI.