Enterprise UX Design vs. Startup UX Design: A Difference?

3 min read
Dec 20, 2018

The User Experience (UX) design team plays a crucial role in the development of a digital product. However, not all design teams approach projects in the same way. The environment in which the UX designers work and their end goal can significantly impact what they focus on throughout the process. Discover the key differences in process, best practices, and design outcomes of a team working within startup vs enterprise UX design.

Innovation in the UX Design Process

When it comes to enterprise UX design, teams are often responsible for building or improving upon products as efficiently as possible. The pressure to meet deadlines can cause some teams to neglect key elements of a strong user experience.

The best mobile UX design is yielded from a natural process in which everyone involved has opportunities to bring new ideas to the table. Designers don’t have the chance to identify new solutions when they have specific goals and limited time. This can stunt or even prevent innovation. This is one of the greatest drawbacks of enterprise UX design.

The same can’t always be said for user experience designers at new startups. Since the organization doesn’t have any existing customers yet, there’s simply less pressure to deliver the product. The goal at the start is merely to build the strongest app possible.

That means designers can explore a wider range of potential solutions within their UX design process steps. This flexibility and encouragement of innovation within UX product design often results in a superior app.

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What Enterprise UX Design Teams Can Learn from Startups

This doesn’t mean all enterprise UX teams need to fall into these bad habits, or are guaranteed to do so. They (or those responsible for managing them) must simply remember certain key points to continue behaving more like a startup.

Expand the Scope of the UX Design Process

First, that means remembering what experts often point out: that, despite the job title, the role of user experience designers should involve more than just design work. It’s important that mobile UX design teams also have enough time to conduct market research and test new products or improvements thoroughly to ensure they deliver genuine value to a user. 

Prioritize User Experience Above All

Second, designers must also be sure to focus on the user throughout every step of the process by keeping user experience goals at top of mind. This may seem obvious, but it’s especially important for enterprise UX design. It’s easy for someone to plan a new feature and task a UX product design team with creating it before truly stopping to consider if the user will have a more positive experience because of it. 

On the other hand, user experience web design and app design teams at startups know they can only succeed if the user is central to every single step they take. This mindset ensures they only focus on developing features and products that offer distinct value. 

Question User Experience Best Practices

Finally, it helps to have an inquisitive work philosophy. User experience designers are better innovators when they are encouraged to question every solution they develop. It’s clearly important for everyone involved in the UX design process to be on the same page regarding their goals. But, it’s also necessary for developers to have a certain degree of freedom. Developers can share new ideas and point everyone in new directions beyond the established user experience best practices. 

This philosophy is inherent in the startup environment. After all, 90% of startups fail. UX product design teams working in those environments know they need to be creative and mindful. Otherwise they will build a product which fails to meet expectations.

That’s the key difference between startup and enterprise UX design. In an enterprise environment, an organisations success can limit perspective on how to continue serving customers.

Again, that doesn’t mean user experience web design teams and app developers for enterprises must conform to this approach. They simply need to remember to think like startup design teams.

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