Overcoming Challenges in Enterprise UX by Stéphanie Walter

Enterprise UX is not just “regular UX at scale.” It comes with legacy systems, a lot of complexity, internal politics, and 17 different types of users who all want different things, in the same interface. And that’s before you even start designing.

Last week, I joined a live Q&A session with UXtweak called “Overcoming the Challenges of Enterprise UX.” We talked about what makes enterprise UX so unique, how to deal with internal tools, how to build trust with stakeholders, and how to survive in organizations that are still figuring UX out. I pulled together 12 takeaways from the conversation for people who don’t have time to watch the whole thing.

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The video

Missed the live session? No problem. You can watch the full replay, including all the audience Q&A, over on UXtweak’s YouTube channel.

I had a very fun time, and, I really enjoy such live format. If you host live Q and A and want me to participate, please reach out!

12 Takeaways from the Enterprise UX Q&A Live Session

The full session is about an hour long. If you don’t have the time to watch, and want a short summary, I’ve pulled out 12 key takeaways for you. Each one comes with a short quote from the session, you can casually drop into your next team meeting. Name drop me if you need to!

1. Enterprise UX is not consumer UX, delightful is not the priority

“My users don’t care about delight. They care about doing their job in the most efficient way.”

Enterprise UX serves internal users like employees. In B2C, users choose the tools they like. In enterprise UX, they often don’t. They’re handed tools by IT or procurement. So designers shift from optimizing for delight or conversion to reducing errors, improving reliability, and increasing workflow efficiency. Metrics like “engagement” take a back seat to “does it work without breaking anyone’s job.”

2. Complexity is real, don’t simplify it away

“Your users might not want oversimplification. They need their data.”

Users often deal with dense, data-heavy workflows. So, “simplifying the UI” sounds good in theory. Until you try to fit the real-life workflow of five roles, 20 data columns, and six compliance checks into a clean UI. In enterprise, complexity often reflects business and system legacy. Good UX here means managing that complexity, not pretending it doesn’t exist.

3. Politics aren’t optional, you need to learn how to navigate it.

“You become very diplomatic. You have to understand what makes your stakeholders tick.”

Enterprise UX isn’t just designing for users, it’s navigating stakeholder agendas, legacy decisions, and cross-departmental power struggles and silos. You need to understand who’s incentivized by what, who’s blocking progress, and how to align your UX goals with theirs. UXers need diplomacy and awareness of internal dynamics.

Learn stakeholders’ goals and KPIs, tie UX outcomes to those goals, and build trust by showing value early and often. Don’t hide what you are working on to have a surprise “big reveals.” at the end. This is a recipe for disaster and losing the trust of the people you work with. Be transparent.

4. Kill the bandwagon effect

“Split the group. Meet people 1:1. That’s how you get honest feedback.”

Group sessions often lead to echo chambers. One loud or senior voice says “this doesn’t work,” and everyone else piles on. My approach? Isolate feedback. One-on-one sessions reveal the truth behind user reactions, without peer pressure. Kill group effects and biases like Bandwagon effect. And, if you have no idea what the bandwagon effect, hire me for a workshop with your team, or check my cognitive biases cards in my shop!

5. Be visible. Be early. Be everywhere.

“The big reveal works in movies, not in enterprise UX. Be visible, be early, be everywhere”

UX doesn’t work in stealth mode. Show what you’re working on. Share video clips. Share your wins. Show your impact. Post snippets from interviews (we do this in Teams for example). Build curiosity about the process, not just the results. The earlier stakeholders see the value, the less likely they’ll treat UX as decoration. Make your work visible!

6. Feed people: literally and figuratively

“Even if it’s not my job, I help, for visibility and goodwill.”

Enterprise UX isn’t about job descriptions. It’s about relationships. Be helpful, even outside strict job roles, to build goodwill and familiarity across teams. Help someone polish their Powerpoint presentation, if it only takes you 1 hour. Jump into a meeting you weren’t invited to. Bring snacks to your developers and testers. Those favors build bridges and get you access where it matters. Visibility leads to trust. Build a strong network of allies, who will advocate for UX on your behalf, with time.

7. Design for roles & tasks, not personas

“We try to provide defaults that work for the majority—and then always options for the little niche.”

For enterprise UX, we usually don’t care if the users love cats, coffee habits, or about their age groups — the classic marketing personas. They care about roles and tasks. A legal reviewer, a loan officer, and a risk analyst may all use the same screen, but for very different reasons. Design accordingly. Segment users by roles or tasks, then prioritize features by frequency and impact. Use progressive disclosure to show some elements, when users need them. And allow personalization where possible.

8. UX maturity takes time, be patient

“Start small. Show success. Be patient.”

No one hands you influence on Day One. Sometimes you’re brought in to “make it pretty” after the code is done. That’s not ideal, but it’s fine, we can use it, to explain our UX process. Explain to the colleague, that they next time, they could ask for your help earlier. That you could run usability testing session, on the design, before developing it. Every small win becomes a brick in the wall of UX maturity.

9. Want to break silos? Map the journey

“People don’t even realize their part breaks the experience.”

Departments often don’t see where their piece breaks the user experience. Journey maps and service blueprints make those gaps painfully obvious, and harder to ignore. It’s a subtle but powerful way to connect teams that don’t usually talk. Be the connector and translator between teams.

10. Research is strategic: use it to steer, not just validate

“The product was usable, but the users didn’t want it. There was no market.”

UX research isn’t just a usability checkbox. It’s how you find out if the thing is worth building in the first place. In enterprise, where building is slow and expensive, early research prevents wasted effort and exposes flawed assumptions fast. Validate assumptions early with users! Task analysis is a key method for that. You want to avoid building something beautifully useless.

If you’re running early research and need a solid setup, I have a User Interview Starter Kit that includes question templates, a note-taking board, and a prep checklist. It helps you skip the blank page feeling and just get started.

Get the User Testing Templates Starter Kit

11. Collaboration with other is strategic

“Our business analysts attend usability testing sessions as notetakers: they get to see users in action.”

When working with other roles, clarify responsibilities and focus on collaboration, not competition. Acknowledge contributions and define how UX complements other roles like analysts or developers. We do a lot of daily syncs, but also use shared documentation. Including stakeholders, devs and analysts in UX sessions helps alignment. Transparency builds a shared understanding.

12. Enterprise UX metrics focus on employee’s efficiency

“We use UMUX-lite to measure usability and usefulness, and track how that evolves.”

You might not be able to have a direct impact on metrics like retention, conversion rate, sales, conversion. But, enterprise UX supports productivity, efficiency, and risk reduction, all of which indirectly impact business metrics in the end. On my project, we measure ease of use and usefulness with the UMUX-lite, but also error rates, support tickets. It’s mostly about measuring effectiveness and efficiency.

Final Thoughts on Enterprise UX

That’s it for the short version. Enterprise UX is messy, political, full of complexity… and still weirdly fun when you find the right approach. And, I love it. If you need a little help getting started with user interviews, usability tests, or mapping messy journeys, I have some templates in my shop that can save you a few headaches. I also offer remote and in person workshops, to train your teams. Don’t hesitate to reach out!

Now go forth and design things that actually work (even if the interface has 20 columns and 3 types of users).

Overcoming Challenges in Enterprise UX