In a recent episode of UX Banter Season 5, we sat down with Tyler King, Senior UX Researcher at SAP with over a decade of experience in human-centered design. Tyler’s journey from marketing to enterprise UX offers valuable perspectives on what makes this often-overlooked field so intellectually stimulating and impactful.
Finding Your UX Path
Tyler’s story highlights how career paths in UX aren’t always linear. With a background in marketing and product development, she found herself unexpectedly transitioning into UX research—a field she hadn’t previously considered but quickly discovered was her true calling. This serendipitous shift reminds us that many UX professionals arrive through diverse routes, bringing valuable interdisciplinary perspectives to their work.
As the field continues to evolve, these diverse backgrounds have become an asset, especially when navigating complex environments like enterprise UX. The journey from traditional consumer-facing products to enterprise solutions often marks a pivotal moment in a UX professional’s career. It’s a shift that demands new skills, deeper business understanding, and a different lens on user needs.
Why Enterprise UX Deserves More Attention
While consumer-facing UX often captures the spotlight, enterprise UX offers unique challenges and rewards that many practitioners find deeply fulfilling:
Global Impact at Scale
Enterprise solutions affect thousands, sometimes millions of users worldwide. From small factories in emerging markets to multinational corporations, these products shape how businesses operate globally.
Balancing Legacy and Innovation
One of the most intellectually challenging aspects of enterprise UX is navigating the tension between established systems and emerging technologies. Unlike startups that build from scratch, enterprise UX professionals must consider existing infrastructure while driving modernization.
Complex Problem-Solving
Enterprise UX demands multidimensional thinking. Products must satisfy numerous stakeholders, comply with industry regulations, integrate with existing workflows, and accommodate complex business logic, creating puzzles that require both creative and analytical skills to solve.
Yet mastering enterprise UX is not just about designing scalable solutions—it’s also about ensuring those solutions resonate across different cultures, industries, and regulatory landscapes. To truly serve a global user base, UX teams must dig deeper into the realities and constraints users face around the world.
Overcoming Research Challenges Across Borders
Global UX research presents significant challenges, particularly around data privacy regulations that vary dramatically between regions. Research teams often face legal barriers that can inadvertently bias findings toward certain geographic areas.
Successful enterprise UX organizations address this by:
- Building global research networks with team members across key markets
- Developing region-specific research protocols that comply with local regulations
- Creating collaborative partnerships with regional offices to gain authentic user insights
In a globalized world, the success of an enterprise product increasingly hinges on how well UX research can capture the nuances of local needs—without losing sight of the broader business goals. Enterprises that invest in building inclusive, regionally aware research capabilities are better positioned to create solutions that truly work everywhere.
Strategic Prioritization in Enterprise Environments
In large organizations with competing demands, effective prioritization becomes essential. Experienced UX practitioners approach this by:
- Mapping stakeholder priorities against user needs to identify alignment opportunities
- Connecting research initiatives to business objectives
- Balancing quick usability improvements with more substantial strategic initiatives
- Incorporating insights into both immediate development cycles and long-term roadmaps
The Power of Storytelling in UX
Perhaps the most transferable insight from enterprise UX is the critical importance of storytelling. Beyond gathering data and generating insights, UX professionals must communicate findings in ways that resonate with diverse stakeholders and drive action.
Effective UX storytelling connects user experiences to business outcomes, creating narratives that make abstract concepts concrete and compelling for decision-makers.
Looking Beyond Current Trends
While AI dominates today’s UX conversations, forward-thinking enterprise UX practitioners are already considering emerging technologies like quantum computing. As these technologies mature, they’ll introduce new security, interface, and interaction challenges that UX teams will need to address.
Finding Your Place in UX
Whether you’re just starting in UX or considering a shift to enterprise work, success often comes from:
- Identifying areas that genuinely excite you, whether that’s complex systems, specific industries, or particular user challenges
- Developing communication skills that translate research into impactful stories
- Cultivating adaptability as technologies, methodologies, and business needs evolve
In the end, what makes enterprise UX rewarding isn’t necessarily the flashiness of the interfaces, but the complexity of the challenges and the scale of the impact when solutions succeed.
Watch the full episode here – What Makes Enterprise UX Exciting? Insights from Tyler King
Catch more interesting episodes on UX Design and beyond, only on UX Banter Podcast. Available on Spotify and YouTube.
