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Interaction
Research in Practice.16
Studies UX Pros should know
Kath Straub
Usability.org
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Enterprise UX patterns:
Good, bad and ugly
Kath Straub, PhD
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Abstract
Documented, enterprise design standards supporting homogenous
customer experiences across different systems and touch points are
often considered a holy grail of UX design. In many ways they are.
But they can also lead to unintended consequences for both the
design team and subsequent designs. We draw on experiences from
a large federal agency to describe the impact, some positive and
some less so, that mature but evolving design standards can have on
designers, design and the development processes.
Attendees will be exposed–for the first time–to the agency’s
extensive and extensively tested design patterns, and will benefit
from a frank discussion of the new challenges that evolving
enterprise standards introduce.
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Design	patterns
The	Easter	bunny
&	the	O’s	in	first	place
Promises, promises …
Benefit
Consistency across systems and devices.
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Benefit
Patterns reduce everyone’s effort.
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Benefit
Supports the paramedic model of UX
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Benefit
Integrate testing across projects.
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The User Experience Framework
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Agency	Web	Patterns
If you could change 1 thing
about the way you’ve developed
or managed your web standards,
what would you change?
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Key insight
Developers are users, too.
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We	are	here.
Challenge
Patterns are necessarily deployed incomplete.
Challenge
Role of developers morphs
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Challenge
Pattern developers have to make choices.
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Challenge
Pattern developers do not want to be CSRs.
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Challenge
Pattern developers have to make choices.
Challenge
Patterns are documented as atoms not molecules.
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Challenge
Pattern documentation testing needs to be multi-layer.
• Find
• Apply
• Modify
Challenge
Overtime patterns and code become one.
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Patterns
Code
Axure Prototyping Tools
Challenge
Designers with “advanced” tools stop sketching (!)
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Benefit? Challenge? A little of both?
The role of designer changes, too.
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Challenge
Designers start think in patterns first, not needs
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Challenge
Designers now come in two flavors
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Compliance
Challenge
Retrofitting legacy systems to patterns
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We	are	here.
What’s next?
Web
Components
Methods
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Questions?
What do you think?
kath@usability.org
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathstraub/
@kathstraub
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About the speaker
Kath Straub, PhD
Principal
Contact
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Usability.org helps	organizations	around	
the	world	improve	customer	engagement	
and	evolve	their	customer	research/	
design	capabilities.	We	provide
• Customer	research
• Interaction	and	communication	design
• Evaluation
• Training/mentoring
• Organizational	change	strategy
• Staff	augmentation
Have	a	question?	Please	ask!	
info@usability.org

Enterprise UX patterns: Good, bad and ugly