This is a follow-up to a previous post on product thinking. The feedback from that post boils down to a common question, “does product thinking even matter for enterprise applications?”
Answer: Oh, yes.
Definition of enterprise application: Custom built network-centric software intended to be used within an organization to conduct its particular business. Most are built by the organization’s IT department or made-to-order by an outside software vendor.
Since enterprise applications aren’t thought to be competitive, differential value can seem irrelevant and features/benefits can seem appropriate areas of product focus. Sadly, that is the perspective from which enterprise apps are often designed.
I’ll argue that product thinking greatly benefits enterprise applications and is essential to driving real ROI from custom software development investments. People mistakenly visualize product thinking as an emphasis on superficial stylistic elements…graphic art, pretty buttons, rounded corners, etc. While there is some of that, the center of mass is actually product innovation, impact, and desirability.
Let’s hit those three elements from the perspective of enterprise applications:
Why product innovation matters:
Enterprise applications are the belts connecting all the pulleys in an organization; they receive, process, and output all the data. Product innovation can push these systems to do more, or do the same in an improved way. Innovations in enterprise applications can be the driving force behind new product and service offerings, or the instrument for realizing higher margins on offerings that are otherwise commoditized in the marketplace. Whether your business is to hunt terrorists or stamp widgets, new and always changing business models keep you competitive and relevant.
Product thinking inserts a powerful dose of creativity and innovation into system design. Rather than limit development to implementing previously conceived features and benefits; it can actually drive the creation of completely new features and benefits. When combined with short-cycle delivery approaches like Agile Software development, intense product innovation can yield extreme benefits to the owning enterprise.
Why impact matters:
Innovations that radically improve, replace, or dispose of the way you do everyday things are the high impact innovations. Conversely, a fantastic technology can be irrelevant if it has no material impact on the people or organization.
The problem with conventional NPD approaches is the sparse accountability for separating low-impact innovations and design from those of high-impact. Moreover, a major component of high-impact is whether people will actually use it. Some of industry’s biggest ideas failed because people wouldn’t use them or didn’t like them. In order for innovation to have impact, it needs to start with the perspective of the humans.
Product thinking does exactly this; it focuses on what people need, what they will accept, and what they will adapt to. It targets application design at the things with the highest potential impact.
Why desirability matters:
Users of enterprise applications generally don’t have any consumer-type freedom to pick the best application; but they absolutely decide how much of a system’s features they use. I’ve seen many enterprises where people opt to use the manual backup procedures because they hate using the system; or they use old systems/features instead of the new ones because they hate the new systems/features.
Consumer preference might not be important to the enterprise application designer, but user adoption is. By creating applications with qualities that are desirable, or even indispensible, in the eyes of users we encourage higher adoption rates and superior “impact”.
Product thinking is extremely people-centric. A trained designer will add elements to a product that may have limited functional justification, but does so with the express intent to appeal to humans. This creates a well rounded product that people enjoy using and prefer to use.
Why design matters:
This is the rollup of it all. An application’s design is the delivery vehicle for its features/benefits as well as the driving force behind edge pushing feature-benefit innovation
Enterprises benefit when we in technology push design to new highs, particularly if we do it efficiently and with the accountability of a commercially competitive environment.