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Enterprise IT: the complexity-simplicity tradeoff

It takes management time to save employees time and managers are simply not prepared to make that sacrifice.

Making life easier for employees requires much more ongoing hard work from management and IT. It takes management time to save employees time and managers are simply not prepared to make that sacrifice.

Gerry McGovern

…painfully true and why the User Experience function needs to be included in Enterprise IT software selection, intranet information architecture and/or the boardroom.

Updated, 12th March

A great and timely article from the Harvard Business Review on The Rise of UX Leadership. The core argument is that more senior managers are buying-into user-centred design for their products (the ‘Steve Jobs’ approach).

However it cautions that these leaders need to have a real understanding of UCD if they are to affect designs that are aligned with validated user needs, else they may end-up shipping products with that still have feature bloat, or are too complex, albeit unintentionally.

As usual, Leisa Reichelt is right on the money with when it comes to practical UX matters noting in a recent interview that…

…it’s very easy to say that customers are your number one priority, but for most it will require some pretty fundamental change to actually follow through on this, and most aren’t up for it.

By Rik Williams

I write about how to collaborate to design simple, usable and inclusive information experiences that make the lives of customers easier. Read more in Categories and Tags.