Bosses buy bad UX

User Experience matters to users. In Enterprise, users usually have no say in the software they use. Those decisions are made by bosses, bean counters or 'IT'. UX may not even be on their checklist.

Most bosses won't be using the software. Not even email in many cases. They have a secretary/PA for that. This is not a criticism. It's an observation. It's just the nature of their jobs.

Accountants should look at the bigger picture, the TCO, but they'll have a hard time seeing beyond tangible, measurable costs.

In organisations where IT call the shots, I don't think they have the best interests of the user at heart. Or rather the UI that they use is the admin end. How easy it is to configure and maintain users on the system. End user UX may not be of great concern. If it's really bad, they'll get swamped with support calls, but most likely, they'll get no calls from disgruntled users who can work software that they hate and bitch about it to their colleagues.

I can think of only one case where universal hatred of a product caused change in a large organisation. Said organisation moved from an ancient but functional email system, Teamworks, to Lotus Notes. Initially most people were quite excited to get a modern client. There were some initial problems. There was some initial dislike. This is normal. People don't like change. They'll grumble. They'll pine for the old, unless you give them a chance to try the old again: then they'll run from it screaming.

What's not normal is for universal long term hatred of a new product. It took about two or three years of mass user complaint, but eventually, thankfully, it was dropped in favour of Outlook. The product became known as 'FLN' ("F*cking Lotus Notes"). The only person I've ever heard defend FLN worked at basement level IT, made his own Roman clothing for re-enactments and knew his way around a twelve-sided die. He also derided users for not being able to use the unusable FLN. (He's a really nice bloke, but he's more Moss than Roy. )

Outlook is far from perfect, of course, but the UX improvement, compared to FLN, was astonishing.

I've worked on products that have appalling UX. Old fashioned, like some Windows 3.1 app. I worked for one company for a short time that took pride in its applications looking shit. They drew attention to it in the brochure. They didn't call it 'shit' directly, they called it something like 'focused on utility, not on eye candy'. Anyone trying to make it look better to work better would probably get a formal warning.

The terrible thing ? They were right. Looking shit was a genuine advantage for them. Some kind of negative reinforcement. The message was 'Hah! Look at the eye candy in [rival product]. We didn't waste time on that nonsense, we made our product work'. This marketing was successful because the people buying the product were amenable to the message, and they were not the ones who would have to use it day in, day out for hours and hours.

When function and form are treated as mutually exclusive, it's often the user that suffers, not the bloke signing the cheques.