With businesses increasingly using software as an integral part of their operations, it has become incredibly important for them to know what their software’s users want and need. However, this is easier said than done, which is why many companies resort to guessing or even altogether ignoring some aspects of their software’s user experience (UX). This results in difficulty of use and inefficient processes, which could have a negative effect on the business’ bottomline.
Meticular, a UX design agency, specializes in helping companies that don't have full-time designers elevate their software’s UX capabilities. Clients work with Meticular as if it were their own UX department, jointly developing strategies, expertly designing the user experience, validating the design with real users, and optimizing the product.
According to James Taylor, Founder and CEO of Meticular, there are several industries that have fallen behind on the UX curve, including finance and healthcare. These industries have been around for a very long time and have done a great job working on an in-person basis. However, this is causing significant inertia on the transformation towards the current digital, software-based paradigm of doing business.
Taylor says that the financial industry has grown leaps and bounds technology-wise in the past decade or so. While there are new financial technology apps, such as online trading platforms, that have great UX, most older financial institutions often fare poorer in UX. These include the big consumer banks and local credit unions. According to Taylor, just about all financial institutions that did not start out as a Software as a Service (SaaS) are behind on UX, due to the huge impact technology has had on finance.
Despite that, Taylor says the UX laggards in the financial industry are the internal software being used by the employees of older and larger financial institutions. Oftentimes, these software have been created a long time ago, and are made with security, rather than useability in mind.
“A lot of focus has been put on the technology side, which is appropriate, since banks and other financial companies’ main concerns are security and reliability,” Taylor says. “This has resulted in the user experience side not being shown as much love. But, I also believe that they should also begin paying more attention to UX, because their employees are using these programs on a daily basis. They need to optimize their internal programs to make them easier to use and help them grow their business faster.”
Aside from finance, the healthcare industry has had its own share of trouble with regard to user experience. Taylor says some healthcare companies have been using decades-old software to manage their electronic medical records. Despite the difficulties encountered by users, many hospitals and health-related companies are too busy with patients and their core business functions that software updates fall to the wayside.
“Healthcare sometimes runs into the same issue as finance, where the consumer-facing programs are much better than what the internal employees use, with employees stuck with a system that isn't very user friendly,” Taylor says. “But, if you think about it, it’s the employees who use the software daily that need better UX than a consumer who's checking in only every now and then. However, companies invest more on consumer-facing UX because, if a customer doesn’t like the software, they can easily pick a competitor. On the other hand, employees have no choice but to use the internal software.”
To both the financial and healthcare industries’ credit, Taylor says that these industries are good at what they do. Many companies are already well-established and have human-led procedures in place, and software can never replace crucial employees, such as nurses. However, it’s these industries being so well-established that makes it hard to create change in areas such as UX. Until quite recently, these industries have been using paper, and most of the top leadership have built their careers on paper-based systems, making it harder for them to keep up with technological developments.
Taylor also identified two other industries that need improvement in terms of UX – nonprofits and government. These two are on the opposite sides of the same coin, with nonprofits often lacking the funding to hire good UX designers, while government entities do have the funding, but their bureaucratic processes often make it hard to get changes done.
In solving their UX issues, Taylor recommends that companies, regardless of industry, adopt a mentality of making incremental changes to their software user experience, rather than leaving it all to a huge update. The small changes add up, and, if there are any problems with the update, it will be easier for companies and their design teams to identify which areas to fix. Taylor believes that getting into a continuous improvement and continuous development (CICD) mindset is important for any entity that wants to improve their software’s UX.
“To achieve this, companies need a partner like Meticular that is willing to do the heavy lifting for them,” he adds. “We work with clients every step of the way, and it's very much collaborative. We like to call ourselves a plug-and-play UX design team, and our methodology allows clients to achieve some quick wins soon after we get onboard. While working with clients' leadership, and teams, we also found that it helps to have a third party in there as a sounding board as we can often bring a fresh perspective.”
Media contact:
Name: James Taylor
Email: [email protected]
