Signs Your Software Needs a UX Redesign

There’s an old adage, “You don’t know what you don’t know”, but when it comes to the design of your product, you probably already have a feeling when it looks outdated, feels clunky—and worst of all—when your product demo is a bit “meh”. You might not know exactly what to do about it, but your gut is telling you that something needs to be done.

Each role or function on a given software team is going to feel this pain a little differently. Here are a few of the things we’ve heard out there in the wild:

Executives

• “I’m communicating a vision where a better experience is at the heart, but I’m not seeing improvements in the features or screens of each new release.”
• “New competitors are moving faster and delivering better quality than us. We need to stay competitive.”
• “Renewals are harder to get because people aren’t adopting the tool and relying on it every day.”

Product teams

• “I want the UX to be better, but I don’t know how to make it happen.” —Dev teams
• “I know enough to be dangerous design-wise, but now I’m feeling like it’s dangerous that I’m trying to design so much!” —Product Managers
• “We don’t know what UX standards we’re supposed to follow or reach.” —The Whole Team

Sales & Technical Sales

• “The sales demo makes me feel a little queasy especially when I get to some of the clunky parts I know people have objections to.”
• “I get anxious during the sales demo because I know there are some clunky parts that I’ll need to gloss over.”
• “It works great but I just know some prospects get put off by how it looks.” 

What we mean by UX redesign

A redesign can go as deep or as shallow as needed depending on the individual scenario. We’ll often start a project like this by assessing what we should keep and what should go (also known as a UX Audit). Often, enterprise software companies don’t have quantitative telemetry data that looks at precise usage of features, so we derive what’s being used to start us off and then assess, out of what isn’t being used, whether it’s because of poor execution of the feature or if there’s legitimately no use for such a functionality.

In many products, there are things that work well and things that aren’t working out at all. We discern which is which (and why!), and this discernment is at the heart of what makes a redesign project successful. 

A redesign ≠ scrapping everything

Sometimes the team is so frustrated with the product they want to throw it all out and start all over, but that’s not always necessary. After all, people bought your product for a reason! It’s worthwhile to consider carefully what falls into the category of incremental improvement versus a total rethink. 

Rethinking your flows

Mapping out how the software works at a fundamental level is really important. A redesign often comes with very interesting design sessions where we think a bit differently about the flows which are cemented in many people’s minds. This helps the team change their mentality, which is a core benefit of introducing the first steps of a UX culture.

Signs it’s time for a UX redesign

We’ve spoken with many an enterprise software crew and we have noticed a lot of common scenarios arise. We’ve put them together for you to check out—These signals come out of SaaS companies who are selling larger contracts to enterprises, not as much on the PLG (product-led growth) crew.

You can use this list to figure out if these product, organizational, technical or market signals apply to you and point to the need for a UX redesign. 

Workflows are evolving faster than your software

If your software isn’t keeping up with the changing needs of users and workflows, why would a company stick with you?

Lots of b2b software is being created in the context of novel technologies – to this end, workflows are destined to change for users, along with their overall ‘software stack’. Has your user’s workflow changed from when you built your product initially? Are you keeping up with these workflow changes? If you aren’t, is your competitor poised to leapfrog you?

New deals are hindered

If closing the deal is more important than adoption and value to customers, will they start to pick up on that?

Maybe your older customers are grandfathered in and will put up with some work-arounds, but are new users being prevented from achieving their core goals with your product (even though you should be a good fit for them)? This situation could prevent you from growing into a new vertical or could hold you back from scaling further.

Shabby, haphazard front-end

Does your front-end match the sophistication of your back-end? 

In enterprise software, we make a lot of really elaborate and rich algorithms and backend logic to deal with the complexity of the systems they serve. Sometimes this means that we emphasize that work so much that the UI gets neglected. Is a shabby exterior stopping users from falling in love with your product, or worse yet, feeling like it isn’t trustworthy?

Efficiency is blocked

If your user depends on your tool but the UX costs them unnecessary time and energy, where does the business case land at renewal?

When your customers spend their workday from within your product, they often want to optimize their process. There’s no reason your users should have to tolerate unnecessary navigation or repetitive actions when you can easily fix these things with better structures and more efficient interactions.

Training is a necessary burden

Has your software become so convoluted that it depends on some super smart, in-depth training? How well would this scale?

If you find yourself having to re-train users on your product multiple times, there’s a strong chance it may be unnecessarily complex. Perhaps the software maps to the original version of your data model and not to how users think, or new features and pages have been added in over the years that push the boundaries of the original design in a way that wasn’t intentional. Simplification comes through good UX design and is very fixable.

High number of support tickets

Do users feel blocked or defeated by technology when they use your product, or do they feel like the sky is the limit and you’ll help them get there?

If extra support tickets stem from usability issues or general UX confusion—such as difficulties with navigation, for example—it may constitute a 'design bug.' Servicing unnecessary support tickets like these costs companies a lot of money. Not only that, but in specialized industries sourcing good quality support people, particularly when they have domain or technical expertise, is very difficult. Great support people are a rare breed (and a chatbot isn’t always the answer). Usability issues found in support tickets represent low hanging fruit during a UX redesign process. The costs associated with dealing with more customer support than you need might inform your business case and thinking about the ROI of a UX design investment.

Cross-device use case is rising

Are there opportunities being missed because you don’t understand the variety and depth of your users’ cross-device workflows? 

Users may be working across multiple devices that you didn’t account for in the past, including small screen sizes like tablets or phones. Deeply considering the use cases for other devices is important—For example, you may have software people use on the factory floor and they’re accessing it via both tablet and desktop. Their use cases may be completely different: on the factory floor, a manager might be taking pictures, checking off lists and confirming product details, while in the office they might be diving into analytics and managing quality issues. Are there opportunities here for you to further differentiate yourself from the competition and attract more users?

The software demo is disappointing

Does your demo sow doubt, slow down sales, or even lose them altogether? Does it drive up the cost of acquiring a new customer?

The software demo is an essential part of the sales process in the enterprise software world. Often if your software doesn’t present well and appeal to people in a general way, there’s a problem, and a very fixable one at that. You may find your demo falling down because of just general look and feel, or the flows and interactions themselves will come off a little convoluted. 

Download our whitepaper: The Art of the Software Demo if any of this resonates for you.

AI is slapped in

Does your AI integration strategy make sense, or was it blindly pushed to jump on a trend?

Many companies are scrambling to get AI into their product. Most have opted for a chat agent which lays on top of your product. At first glance this is a reasonable approach, but as we get more mature with AI, the expectation for the experience to be AI at its core is apparent. We work on all manner of AI features and products as a core AI UX service and can help you get going with relevant, embedded AI functionality for your users.

The role of tech debt in this equation

Often when we’re approached to provide UX services to a B2B software company, we hear the same story. The dev team has reached their limit using an old stack, and while identifying what to rebuild with, the team identified that re-thinking and redesigning should be a core part of that. A rebuild is a big investment that will yield easier feature creation and ultimately a lot more code sent to production, only with UX involved, those new features can be much more derisked and relevant to users. 

Understanding how much design debt you have

Most of us build fast. This means design decisions are made ad hoc and as quickly as possible. Even the best designers in the world can’t totally prevent design debt (though a design system helps). At any rate, features bloat more and more throughout the development process. This can lead to a lot of design red flags which slowly accumulate in your product. 

Now getting a grip on where you stand UX-wise isn’t a super easy thing to do. Often, team members will share different opinions on what good design is: Jerry will pipe in talking about the number of clicks, while Aminder will mention that the “nav is wrong”. Though these two have a point, they may not be able to rank and prioritize the issues. This is where UX professionals will come in and perform a systematic UX audit, where they will go through specific criteria to identify where the issues are (and how severe they are). 

UX redesign process summary

Generally speaking, the UX redesign process sticks to the UX process framework, but with some special considerations. In the process of redesign, we need to understand what's working and what needs rethinking. Even if you've got a lot of tech and design debt, that doesn't mean that your software should be "thrown out" and you need to start again from scratch. If your application exists and people pay for it, it has relevancy and utility. Whether a formal UX Audit is performed or not, in a UX redesign process, the mission is to discover the gems that exist and fix the UX problems. Often we will map out the user journey for the first time, and this will uncover a ton of new opportunities and get the team thinking in a new way. During the process of UX redesign, the team changes their approach to prioritization, building features and ensuring UX quality. This stems from a new perspective that's decidedly user-centred. For companies where there's a lot of tech and design debt, the product team might be a little slow to fully adopt all the UX/UI practices but sees the benefits bit by bit. Once the team sees users struggle first hand, it can be a game changer. If you're curious about our UX services, have a look at our page and reach out to see if theres a fit. We'd be happy to share our product redesign examples with you!

A redesign isn’t scary, it’s exciting

Have you worked on this product for a long time and wish it was better with all your heart? You’re in good company. You share the same feeling as countless product people out there in the world. Whether you’re an executive, a developer, product manager, quality assurance person, or designer you’re in good company. 

Changing your product can also feel scary, not to mention bringing users into the fold (if you haven’t before OR you’re now talking to a new group of people from before). Going through the design process can melt your brain and challenge your assumptions. Here’s the good news, most products don’t need very long to be rethought and redesigned. Many can be revamped in a matter of months, not years. There are plenty of unexpected morale improvements which stem from redesign and a closer relationship with your users (check out our UX culture article to picture that a bit).

Like we said before, your product may not need to be entirely redesigned, just parts of it which aren’t working. Chances are there are things about your experience that works now. 

Curious if you're product needs a redesign? Check out our Redesign Assessment Checklist to to see if you're product needs a quick UX tune-up or a full redesign.