 Good morning everyone. My name is Ankur and I am part of Adobe Design Team. Let me kind of get started by first thanking the organizers for inviting me to give this talk in front of this August audience. It's a specially proud moment for me because I'm going to be talking about a field of design in front of my design guru and I'm sure inspiration for most of us, Professor Sudhakar Nath Karni. And I would confess, I'm also a little nervous because of that. So some of you might be wondering why a designer from Adobe, a company which makes products like Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign is here to talk about designing for enterprise. Let me quickly show you what Adobe has been into besides making the products that we all love and like to use. Because experience is the great differentiator, it separates market leaders from everyone else. Delivering engaging experiences takes deep customer intelligence and amazing design. They must be personal, consistent, beautiful and everywhere your customers expect them. We can help you deliver these great experiences with Adobe Experience Cloud. It includes the combined benefits of three clouds. Adobe Marketing Cloud helps you manage and deliver personalized experiences across any channel so you can connect with customers in the moments that matter. Adobe Advertising Cloud simplifies the delivery of video, display and search advertising across any screen on the industry's first end-to-end platform for both digital and traditional TV advertising. Adobe Analytics Cloud integrates your audience data across all our solutions giving you customer intelligence and deeper insights that you can quickly turn into action. In addition, Adobe Experience Cloud brings together a world-class partner ecosystem and an open platform that's powered by Adobe Sensei. All this is integrated into Adobe Experience Cloud, helping you deliver amazing digital experiences that your customers will love. Adobe has been making this foray to help organizations deliver digital experiences to their customers seamlessly across different channels. Now, when I thought about giving this talk, I thought, let me start by defining what an enterprise product is. And to be able to do that, I tried doing the same thing that most of us in our generation typically do. I Googled for it. And when I did that, this is one of the definitions that came across. I'll read it out for people who might not be able to read it. Enterprise software, also known as enterprise application software, is computer software used to satisfy the needs of an organization rather than an individual user. I repeat. Enterprise software, also known as enterprise application software, is computer software to satisfy the needs of an organization rather than an individual user. It was a little overwhelming for me. Also a little confusing to read this definition. Because as designers, we have always been trained that we are designing for the needs of the user. So I tried to probe a little further on this in regards to why is this being used to define enterprise products. And then I realized possibly this definition was created for an era which looks something like this. A time when it was expected that the users would be only exposed to software products or technology in their work environment. An era when it was expected that work would just be happening within the realm of an office space building. A time when it was expected that before users actually get using any product or technology, they would have to be heavily trained about it. And they'll have to constantly go through documentation to be able to continually working on it. But this is 2017, my friends. And times have really changed. Work is no longer just about 9 to 5. Work is no longer just happening within the premises of a fixed building space. Work travels. Work travels with us when we are sitting at home. Work travels with us when we are sitting in a cafe shop. For some of us, work might be happening as we are attending this conference. The other thing that has really changed in the last decade or so is especially with the advent of mobile technology that devices are everywhere. People are carrying these multiple devices and organizations are becoming more democratic in terms of allowing access to information about their work apps across these devices. And as users are trying to use these devices, they expect a seamless flow of information from one device to another. At the same time, the user also expect that context and the capability of the device would be kept in mind as experiences are being delivered to them. The other thing that has really changed and this should come as no surprise to any of you that these work apps are not being used in silos. We have users using Facebook to check feeds, using WhatsApp to send messages, using Instagram to upload photos, watching and listening to videos on YouTube and at the same time trying to use these work apps. These are the same users who are using all these experiences and many a times along with each other. So for them, really there is no difference between what they expect out of a consumer product like Facebook and what they expect out of the work apps like what they would be using for their organizations. They expect the same ease of use, they expect the same delight, they expect the same fun and they also expect the same security to be there across each of these products and services. And again, just like while they are using any of these consumer apps, they do not want to go through these thick manuals to be know how to use these apps. They expect everything would be working out of box for them. So as the expectations are converging in regards to what people is really expecting from technology, be it in terms of consumer app and enterprise products, why are we really having this talk? What is the need to discuss on this topic about designing for enterprise product? I think it's important to understand that though the expectation of the users from what they want to have from the end product, that has really started converging. The lines between a consumer product and an enterprise product is really getting blurred. But the journey to get to designing these enterprise products is still slightly different when it comes to designing for enterprise product compared to designing for consumer product. And there are different challenges that a designer has to go through while they are thinking about designing an enterprise product compared to a consumer app. And it is important to understand these challenges so that we can really work towards overcoming those and still be able to deliver that rich experience that our end user really want us to deliver. Now, any design course would tell you that the best way to designing any product, irrespective of whether it's a software product, a hardware product, a tangible product, is to really get to know about your users, to really learn from them, to really spend more time with them, to be able to understand what are they trying to do, what are their goals, what they really want, to become an apprentice so that you can follow the master and really know how to get things done. But in an enterprise world, things might not always be as easy. There might be layers of teams that exist between you and the user, making access to the user not always that seamless. Also, in many of the cases, your end user might not be in the same geographical location as you and therefore the amount of time that you can spend with them is always going to be compromised. And remember, it's a fast-moving world. Even our end users many times might not have the required time to spend with you and teach you about the art of what they really require. So we had to think differently. We had to think about how to overcome these challenges and still be able to deliver those rich experiences to our end users. And to be able to do that, we took inspiration from a mythological figure called Ekulabya. In case some of you don't know who Ekulabya is, he was a mythological figure during the time of Mahabharata. He wanted to become the best archer in the world, but he really had very limited means. He approached a guru called Dronacharya and requested him to teach the art of archery. But Dronacharya was a very busy man and he refused. But Ekulabya was determined and he decided to create a sculpture of Dronacharya and use that as a teacher to help him learn the art of archery. And through his determination and grit and perseverance, he was able to convert himself as one of the best archers of that time, of that era. We tried to take inspiration from this story and tried to think about how can we start thinking out of the box so that we can start learning about our users more efficiently. In this new connected world, information is being freely shared by people. There are things that you can get access to which was not possible, let's say 10 or 15 years back. So we tried to spend a lot of time trying to figure out, going through these kind of professional networking sites like LinkedIn. Trying to know when it comes to the kind of people that we are designing for, what are organizations really looking when they are trying to hire them. Trying to look at the kind of skill sets that matter to these organizations. Go through profiles of some of our users or prospective users and try to understand what are the kind of academic background that they are coming from. What are the kind of competencies that they have or they are trying to develop and what are they trying to do to build those. To follow a lot of discussions that are happening in these communities, in these online communities, to try to understand what are the emerging patterns that are happening and what are the things that real users are really looking forward to as they are starting building more and more experiences. And again, as we do that, it keeps us getting those richness of information that we require to really understand who our users are and for whom we are trying to design. The other important aspect is to really understand about the business. Yes, we are designers, but we really need to understand what do business really care about, what are the success for them, what are the experiences that they are wanting to create and what really matters to them at the end of the day. Going through these, either through classroom trainings or online tutorial, really helps us get the depth of what business would really care about and would want us to design for. The other thing that we have learned a lot from is spending time sitting with the customer support team, trying to listen to what pain customers are going through as they are using our product. It's not a pleasurable experience by any means, but it's a great learning experience because you get to hear from the user without they trying to sugar coat things and they really trying to tell you what is not really working with your product. They really trying to tell you what are the kind of scenarios in which they are trying to use your product and your product is not supporting them. It's a great learning experience and also humbling at times. The other thing that we have realized over time is there would be a lot of assumptions that would be thrown across you. This is how our users have always been using the product. This is what they really want. Why are we wanting to change it? Why are we asking them to learn it all over again? I think these are all assumptions that we need to constantly challenge and the only way we can do that is by bringing data to the table because nobody can deny when there is real data that is presented in front of them. Try to understand what are users really trying to use your product for? What are the kind of things in your product that they really care about and are spending most of their time on? What are the kind of things that nobody is actually using but is there in your product because somebody felt that this might be a useful thing for the end user? Try to scientifically analyze it and be able to draw hypothesis out of it so that you can go back to the product team and really ask them to focus on what is essential for the end user rather than trying to continue building on top of the assumptions. One other challenge that as a designer and enterprise product we have to go on day to day basis is that in most of the cases we are not going to be the end user of our product. Traditionally, this has been considered a handicap for a design team which is working on enterprise product because you always have to rely on somebody else trying to tell you how the product should be working. Again, we are trying to challenge these boundaries. We are trying to make sure that every designer who is working on a product is actually spending time using the product. They are actually taking live, real customer examples and trying to use the product to see how far they can go. Again, as we try to do that we realize there are so many traps that are there as part of our product that we might not have considered while we are designing for it. There are so many places that where experience do not really work the way the end user or the customer would have really wanted it to work. And again, it's a great learning experience because you are going through the pain yourself. You are trying to walk the user shoes and then you are realizing the path is not all smooth. As we have gone through this journey, we have also realized that there are some key learnings that we have had as we have traveled this path. Oops, sorry. I think what we have realized over a period of time is designing an enterprise product is in a way like designing a house. Now, when you are designing a house, typically you are talking to the head of the family. I think Kevin also talked about it as part of his presentation. But it's not the only head of the family who is going to be using the house. You really would have to understand what are the needs of the different users or different people who are going to be part of that house. There would be kids who would have their own needs and their own expectation from what they want the house to be. There would be grandparents who would need things to be designed for them in a certain way. There would be housemaker, again, who would have their own needs. And many a time, these people that we don't directly talk to might be the people who are actually spending most of their time in the house. So to be able to design a house which is meant for a family rather than an individual, you really have to think about experiences for each of these users. You can't just focus on the head of the family and design a house just for basis of his needs. A very similar corollary exists in the world of enterprise products. Most of the time, we get talking to the customer, the person who is going to sign the check. They try to define what the requirements of the product are. And as we do that, we as designer always have to look behind and try to figure out who the actual users are going to be because in many of the cases, the customer might not even look at the product and actually use it. We really have to understand what expectations these users whose needs might not be articulated would have from our product. What is the kind of journey they would have to go through as they are using our product. Really try to understand it so that we can create experiences which are personalized to the needs of each of these users so that it makes life easier for them. So rather than designing one size fits all, we are really designing for every user's need. And again, just like designing a house, you just don't go and design the best of the facade or the best of the living room. You really have to care of all the aspect of the house to really make it livable. As an example, you would have to think about where the kitchen needs to be, how the washrooms need to be, how the storage has to be taken care of. Similarly, while you are designing an enterprise product, it is not just about what the core experience of the product is going to be, but how the user would go through the entire journey. Some of you who might have worked in the enterprise product space would know that many a time, the time between when the user actually uses a product to the time when it was bought might be more than six months or one year. How can you streamline, how can you as a designer help to improve that experience so that user really doesn't have to go through those must pain to get the software on his machine. You would have to think about what the first time user experience needs to be. You need to think about what the extensibility story of your product is going to be. I'd like to bring an example of... I'd like to bring an example of what the newest kid on the block called Slack, which is used for collaboration between work teams is trying to do. This is what they try to do in trying to give an experience to the user which is a learning experience at the same time fun experience which introduces to them about different aspect of the product so that they really don't have to go and learn it all over by themselves. Again, these are small things that we need to start thinking about to really make the life of our end user really easy. And again, it's very important to understand nothing of this is going to work in isolation. It's going to be a part of a larger story. Again, for folks who might have worked in the enterprise world you might have heard this story. You know, we just need to design this feature. Can you go and focus on it and design an experience around it? Believe me, nothing is going to work in isolation. It'll be part of an end to end journey. And you really have to think about the overall context even though you might be designing a very small feature which is part of the product. It's just like an orchestra. Even if one note is out of sync, it starts sounding like noise rather than music. So to give a holistic experience to the user you really need to think, think broadly and then start designing things that are required for the product. And again, beauty is always going to be in the details. This is where it'll catch users' attention. You have to sprinkle these delightful experiences to the user all over. It's about those two pixels that you have to go and fight battle for with your product team because it really matters to the user. You'll have to bring out experiences which help people connect with it like actual humans rather than robots who are using a product. Again, I'll try to show you an example of what another product like Mailchimp is trying to do. Again, little bit of quirkliness, little bit of fun element that they are trying to bring in to engage the user to make them feel connected to the experience and therefore love the product. And again, when you are talking about enterprise products you are going to have to cater to the needs of organizations which are very different at scale which might have very different workflows from what you have designed for. And it'll be an ever-changing need because things are changing, things are growing over a period of time. And therefore, as a designer, you would always have to think about how do you design for scale so that tomorrow, if things needs to be customized or grown up, it can be easily done rather than having to redesign the entire product all over again because none of the enterprise product can be designed in a day's time. So you really have to go deep into it in terms of figuring out what the needs of the users are going to be in, let's say, five years or ten years down the line. Just to summarize, none of this would happen in a day's time. There'll be small battles that you'll have to win. There'll be partnerships that you'll have to build with the product team to help them understand, help them empathize with what you are trying to do. And it'll take time. But you'll start having to take these smaller steps so that you can get towards where you really want to be. Because at the end of the day, in this new world of technology features and functionalities are kind of given. They are kind of expected. They are a common denominator. What really matters to the user is the experience that we are surfacing for them and that's what they really care about. Because always remember, you are no longer designing for an error like this and you are not designing for organizations. You are actually designing for actual human beings and make them love your product. Thank you. Again, I won't try to market what Adobe is trying to do, but Adobe has a lot of these tools that are there which helps you capture what is really happening with the products that you are designing for. But nowadays mostly what is trying to happen is most of the product teams are trying to capture a lot of telemetry data in terms of the usage data that is happening within the product itself and trying to get access to teams within your organization that would have that data about the actual usage that is happening on your product would really help you go deep dive into it. Again, I'm sure in most of the organizations now you'll have a team which would be looking at that data and trying to create inferences out of it. Okay, so you are referring to the code instrument which is written itself. I am coming from a service background. That's the reason I was asking where maybe the product is not built in the start with us. Yeah, and that's where you can rely on a lot of other third-party tools Yeah, that's the reason I was asking third-party tools. Okay, thank you. One last question. Hi, this is Priyank. So would you like to share that when it comes to designing software for enterprise or for consumers what kind of challenge we can cater by applying new process or new strategies while designing successful enterprise application than other consumer applications? Yeah, I think one of the key things and that's something that we are constantly working at Adobe also is changing the mindset, changing the mindset in regards to how you are approaching the problem. I'll give you an anecdotal example. When we, at least when I joined Adobe I realized that the design team itself didn't have access to the products that we are building for. We didn't have ways that we could actually go and play with the product. Again, it was not a rocket science that we had to figure it out, but we had to break that mindset. We had to make the product team realize that it is essential for us to have access of all the data, all the information that we would require so that we can make those informed decisions rather than trying to design sitting back in our cubicles. So it's a mindset change that we have to constantly keep on bringing. We have to push the boundaries because things that were working five years back are no longer going to work. So you will have to constantly keep on challenging those things. Thank you sir. I would like to call upon stage Mr. Ranjit, coach here at UX India to give away the momentum to Mr. Ankur. This is like a noble prize for me.