Gathering UX Requirements

Compiling requirements for your Enterprise products can lead you to a tricky spot where it is hard to determine how much is actually enough. There are several defined methods and templates available to suggest what you should do. Gathering user ux requirements often require inputs from your key stakeholders across products, sales, marketing, legal, and so on to contribute and define common business goals.

Theoretically, this sounds fairly simple and the right way to go, but our 6 years of experience in delivering solutions for the enterprise domain with complex team structures has unveiled that the basic challenges around being able to drive this massive effort could lead you to a long-winding path. We know that simply getting everyone on the same plane and mindset to share their inputs in itself is an unrealistic expectation.

The key to outlining a good UX strategy lies in knowing the right methods and tools to opt for based on your needs and goals, to ensure that the process is swift and gets the best of everyone before they are toiled down with extensive documentation.

UX researchers who specialize in eUX ace the skill of ‘Asking the right questions’. Based on your specific need, they are trained to determine the different functional aspects of data collection that is required to draft a winning UX Strategy.

To break it down to its simplest form, requirement gathering for Enterprise products follows a simple pyramid structure.

Business UX Requirements

While solutions built are user-centric, they are driven by the needs of the business core. It is important to capture the goals and intentions of all involved stakeholder perspectives that influence your product. Establish the efforts and resources you are willing to invest to arrive at a final list of quantifiable business goals. As far as possible, these should be defined against measurable KPIs that can validate the success factor of the solution derived through the UX strategy.

A skilled UX team could help you compile these requirements using questionnaires, in-person interviews, contextual inquiries, etc. They would understand the nature of your goals and thereby define the documentation that would be needed by all involved teams. This makes sure that you have just about the right amount of information to get the wheels moving.

User Requirements

We have always been stunned by the insights revealed by the data collected while compiling user requirements. More often than not, they are in stark contrast with those assumed by the business. Your users are your army charging on the front lines, their expectations and desires often revolve around detailed aspects of performing their day-to-day tasks. The aspect of user requirement is extremely significant to the exercise as the users’ inputs often carry the vital areas of improvement which either surface critical roadblocks or valuable insights about process optimization.

Users are driven by the performance standards that are crafted for them by the business along with a common vision in mind. Your user inputs combined with the business goals ensure that your solution is relevant to your future needs.

System Requirements

Gathering information about your digital infrastructure through functional/non-functional system specifications ensures that it is able to support and efficiently run the solution that has been built.

Non-technical teams can often get swayed by compelling options, and industry trends that are exciting to consider could lead to performance-related challenges for your product.

UX documentation exhibits a special emphasis on the understanding of the digital infrastructure for the same reason. A truly successful solution is one that is high on performance and simple in usage.

Closing Thought

Ensure your UX documentation is holistic with the three perspectives of the pyramid in mind. It is true that requirements tend to evolve with time, but in the Enterprise scape of business, the solutioning process is ongoing. Collaboration in the eUX solutioning process can spin things out of grip. Establishing UX requirements at the beginning of a sprint ensures that all involved stakeholders have a common knowledge base, scope, and timelines to adhere to.

Trusted enterprises rely on strategically curated UX documentation process to make sure their teams utilize the innovation opportunities in a way that they are able to maximize their investment and ROI.

More Resources:

The Role of UX in Analytics and Reporting

5 Quick Tips for Better UX Writing

Collaboration between UX team and developers