Here, there be dragons: a fable of UX in the realm of Enterprise SaaS applications
Discussion on the "middle earth" of Enterprise SaaS applications and how you can tame the dragon.
Here is a place that can often feel very far away, strange if not medieval from the lean and clean design world of consumer product development. In this land there is a huge waterfall. Software lives above in a foreboding dark cloud. There are moats to jump across. Castle walls to scale. And then there is the dragon… the product development environment with years and years of ux debt breathing down on the masses protecting and amassing a mountain of gold. Appeasing this dragon by waving the sword of "UX" with the battle cry of "Users!" will get you burnt up. I'd like to share the tactics I used to survive this faraway place and tame the gold-loving dragon. These wins include discovering the "golden egg" - the one metric that matters, and finding the "pot of gold" - reducing operational costs while increasing user engagement.
Krishna Brown, "Billy"
About Krishna:
I am Krishna Brown, nickname is "Billy". I design experiences for services, primarily workflow and business intelligence applications. Being a storyteller and avid reader at heart, I was heavily influenced by Ray Bradbury's sci-fi short stories. I just knew I wanted to design intelligent ambient systems like the one in Bradbury's "The Veldt". Like many of us, I did not intend or even know that what I did was "UX". I design for humans. And things are used. Even if all I’m responsible for is one chapter, one product, one service touchpoint, I design with the whole story (experience) in mind. I'm constantly studying the fragile ecosystem of lifetime value, especially as it relates to the omnipotence of human ambivalence, experience rot and churn.
I grew up in Raleigh, NC. Attended Howard University (DC) where I earned my BA in Advertising. I then went off to Portfolio Center in Atlanta for copywriting, where I ended up graduating with a dual concentration of copywriting and design.