Best Practices for Enterprise Application Design

Quick Summary: Do you want to build an enterprise application for your organization? There are plenty of things you need to consider; design for the project is the first thing that creates a roadmap for project development. For quality design output, you need to focus more on best practices for enterprise application design. This article guides you to enterprise application design best practices. Explore.

People follow different practices to execute ideas into action successfully. You have an agile methodology for software development and Kanban for process management. Similarly, you have a team-based approach, “Lean UX,” that helps create an outstanding design for your enterprise-grade application. But it’s not just about Lean UX; there are plenty of other design practices that play crucial roles in designing your enterprise application UX, irrespective of your industry.

In this article, we are going to discuss enterprise application design best practices, but we will start with the basics first;

What is Enterprise App Design?

Even though design for every application is crucial, enterprise app design ensures it amalgamates every part of your company. Whether it is sales, branding, or workflows, design must meet every aspect. They are designed to keep certain principles and standards. It’s not a single app that can be created keeping a single feature in mind; instead, your UI/UX design team needs to consider various aspects, such as the features, functionalities, records, and other things in mind. Most importantly, when you hire your UI UX team, you need to ensure they are experienced enough to understand your requirements.

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What the Various Challenges of Enterprise Application Design

As we know, enterprise app design is more complex than standard app design. From your team’s expertise and experience to market research and user persona, they play a crucial role in helping you design your enterprise app effectively. So, to make practical outputs, you need to understand the specific challenges that could be roadblocks in creating outstanding UI/UX design for your enterprise application.

Complexity

Usually, an enterprise application is a complete solution that connects various branches to a centralized system. It is a group of multiple apps that join to form an entire system. They are complex, and you need a systematic process to understand them.

Security

When you have an extensive system, security is always a concern. You need to ensure no loopholes, and internet robbers find it hard to invade your system. And it begins with design.

Scalability

Is your system scalable when your business grows? Or will you have to design from scratch to scale your business? You need to understand these phenomena. Usually, when you scale, your system must be able to;

• A large number of data
• Ready adapt changes
• Hold information perfectly

Enterprise Application Design Best Practices

For enterprise applications, design is crucial and unless you follow the best practices of enterprise application design, you may miss a better outcome. We have explained some of crucial challenges. Let's explore the enterprise application design best practices in detail. They are important not just for eliminating those challenges but also for providing high performing and long lasting design for your project.

Simplicity

The appearance of your website is crucial. But, most customers love simplicity, in which they can efficiently perform their desired actions. Enterprise applications are significant and need proper and smooth navigation so users can easily find the action task.

Consistency

Maintaining consistency is one of the most difficult of your UI/UX design. Whether it is user experience or user interfaces, you need to ensure that the rhythm does not break. You need to ensure that the website looks coherent and perfectly works across its different elements. Everything from styling and symbols to animations and functions is the same to ensure usability and learnability.

Leverage Global Design

Instead of focusing on individual UIs, you may consider your entire software stack. It is crucial because enterprise users interact with a more significant number of different tools, and it’s not the solution used in small and medium-sized companies. You need to think about efficient and optimized interfaces across all these tools.

To make this possible, you must use global design patterns and themes. Here are some tips on how you can implement worldwide design and pieces.

• Leverage standard style across all tools
• Ensure components and layouts are the same everywhere in the solution
• Think about defined stylesheets across all enterprise app
• Implement the DRY model, if possible, across all parts design

You can do the same for implementing global themes. For example, leverage a piece that allows users to complete action uninterruptedly. It will increase efficiency.

Think About Scaling

Usually, CTA is crucial for consumer-grade apps. But, in enterprise web applications, you need to focus more on information. Users of enterprise applications are less concerned about completion rates. Easy to access detailed information along with fast and accurate data entry workflows. That means while designing enterprise-grade applications, you need to focus more on providing more space for other information than CTAs. UI part has to be carefully designed.

Think About Established Design Patterns

Having new design ideas for enterprise application design is crucial; what is the guarantee that it will work? No… You need to think about what already works at scale. Refine it and make it more lucrative and easy for users to consume. For example, CRUD interfaces are widely popular in enterprise-grade applications. This is crucial because it involves functional design that eliminates the need to design UI for each from scratch. UIs, like Admin panels, dashboards, data entry forms, signup tools, and others, should be created using the same legacy design pattern.

Create a Design for Longevity

You are not going to redesign very often for your enterprise application. That means you need to create strategies to create design keeping longevity. When you design to keep longevity, you work to remove the negativity that might impact your product in the near future. Design for longevity, also known as D4L show, is the concept of creating a design for a lifetime. The design is created keeping three critical factors in mind;

• The users
• The business
• The resources

The design is focused less on outcomes and more on users in the context. That means it should be a timeless design and follow a flexible sizing system.

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Final Thoughts

We have discussed some of the crucial factors along with best practices for enterprise application design. When it comes to application development, you need to consider the intact design first. And, if it is about enterprise, you need an experienced UX design agency working on your project. At TheFinch Design follows the best practices for design for every design project. We have a vetted team of designers with experience working on a wide range of projects ranging from small to medium to large. We have designed over 20 enterprise-level projects. We help you design projects for your enterprise that last longer and scale as you grow.