The document discusses the unique challenges of B2B user experience (UX) design compared to B2C, highlighting the complexity of user roles and organizational goals in B2B contexts. It outlines six lessons for effectively working in B2B environments, emphasizing the importance of understanding user dynamics, being innovative within constraints, and recognizing that managers may not represent actual user behavior. The author, Robert Gillham, offers insights on navigating the specificities of B2B systems to improve UX outcomes.

1. The Challenges of B2B User Experience Design
What makes it different to B2C, and why?
13th March 2012
Robert Gillham – Principal Consultant

2. Part One: What Defines Good?
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Essaouira_arganier_fruit_%282%29_1270.JPG

3. Part One: What Defines Good?
“We have now
harvested most of the
low-hanging fruit from
the truly horrible
websites that
dominated the lost
decade of Web
usability”
Jakob Nielsen
January 2008
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Essaouira_arganier_fruit_%282%29_1270.JPG

4. What Defines Good? Ecosystems
B2C context
Pension
Scheme Pension plan
Member online tool

5. What Defines Good? Ecosystems
Institutional
Consultant
Investor
B2B
context
Pensions
Manager
Client Pension plan
online tool
Company Member
Trustee

6. Six lessons for UX work in B2B environments
1. Learn to ‘spot’ a B2B system
2. Innovate in small spaces
3. Identify the boss
4. Managers are not users
5. The myth of ‘compulsion’
6. Risk of ‘going native’

7. Learn to spot a B2B system
1. There are multiple users in the system, with
complementary roles
2. The main user of the system is probably not the
named main account holder
3. The use of the system ties in with other processes to
meet organisational goals and are domain-specific
4. The user does not pay for a purchase with their own
money, but maybe from a budget.

8. Learn to innovate in small spaces
• Big companies aren’t all Apple or Amazon!
• They tend to be conservative users of IT
• Computer and systems are replaced at a
slower rate than consumers replace their own
technology
• Smart phones, tablets etc might be unused, or
even forbidden in the workplace
• Your usual array of solutions and suggestions
might not work in this context
Sometimes you will have to be content with
the smallest amount you can do that will have
the greatest impact! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
File:Earls_Court_Police_Box.jpg

9. Identify the boss
• Sometimes the marketing department may have
hired you
• But you are working on the IT manager’s
budget!
• Understand IT teams are subject to all the
constraints and pressures we just spoke about
• This means you will find yourself under:
• Pressure to compromise
• Pressure to deliver early
• Pressure to say the UX solution is what IT
were going to do anyway!

10. Managers are not users
• All managers fondly imagine that they
can describe user behaviour
accurately
• They can’t!
• Even if they used to do this job
themselves
• Senior people who say they are still
users usually aren’t
• Look for proxies

11. The Myth of Compulsion
• IT and business
stakeholders often
labour under the
impression that they
can enforce process
compliance through
interface design
• It is your job to
disabuse them
• People tend to do the
things they want to do
– even at work

12. Don’t go native!
If you hang about the business long enough you
will learn to:
• Understand a complex domain
• Know the users
• Design effective solutions
But you will also learn to:
• Compromise
• Make excuses for technology
• Realise when something is a lot of hard work
In fact you will be useless as an objective UX viewpoint!
Look for opportunities to vary your work mix, rotate on and off projects to avoid
burn out

13. Contact
Robert Gillham
rob.gillham@foolproof.co.uk
Foolproof
Harella House
90-98 Goswell Road
London
EC1V 7DF
+44 (0)20 733 6700
www.foolproof.co.uk