Engineering People / Human machine interface

This is the third article in my series focusing on the People part of complex Engineering and Manufacturing businesses.

For those of you that missed them, here's a link to the first two articles.

Background

Companies developing complex engineered products, manufacturing machinery, and managing intricate supply chains often adopt a highly technical approach. When pursuing transformation, becoming data-driven, reducing costs, or enhancing business performance, the focus naturally gravitates toward technology and processes. In this series, I aim to empower action on the human topics by offering concrete, actionable strategies to help businesses unlock their teams' full potential and ensure seamless integration between people, data, and technology.

I had the privilege of speaking with Neil Webb , head of design at MOHARA . MOHARA builds world class tech products with start-ups, scale-ups and global giants. Neil provides insight from the perspective of the tech solution developers. In this article, 'developer' refers to the individuals responsible for creating and optimizing technology products, software, and systems.

Where does user experience rank in the priorities for Enterprise IT leaders?

When delivering complex technology?products, the focus is often on technical capabilities, system performance or streamlining user flows through automation. After all, these are the measurable, tangible aspects of success and solving technical challenges is often where tech?teams shine. But when the focus shifts too heavily toward innovation or optimisation - creating workflows that might take fewer clicks but require a PhD to understand - design tends to become an afterthought.

Design isn’t just (and shouldn’t be) a “nice-to-have” layer, it’s what connects cutting-edge tech with real human needs. Just look at F1 steering wheels. A lot of investment has gone into bespoke user interfaces to maximize the effectiveness of human-machine (and support team) interaction. Thoughtful design ensures the systems we build are not only powerful but also intuitive, accessible, and capable of delivering real value to the end users. A poorly designed user experience dramatically reduces the benefit of technology, and in some cases even negates it: Tasks take longer to complete, error rates rise, more support is required, employee satisfaction ratings take a dive.?

"I’ve seen plenty of interfaces or workflows that are obviously designed from the IT perspective. Router admin panels are a great example of this, with their cryptic terminology, requiring users to understand concepts like DHCP or NAT. Yes, functional enough for experienced team members but frustrating or confusing for most consumers who feel daunted at the thought of simply changing their Wi-Fi password or setting up parental controls." Neil Webb

[Rob: Wait till you try working with a PLM system]. This highlights the critical need for thoughtful design to bridge the gap between complex systems and real human users, balancing technical constraints with user-centered design.

How do we ensure human needs aren’t overshadowed by the technology?

Neil has some simple advice:

1. Foster collaboration between designers and developers to create products that genuinely work for users. Bring designers in from the start to influence decisions and align usability with technical realities.
2. Present user insights to ground discussions and highlight the importance of usability. Advocate for intuitive workflows, clear language, and reduced cognitive load.
3. Use carefully crafted workshops, prototypes, and usability testing to help developers understand user needs (Design Problem Solving Sprints)

Quick Release took this principle to the extreme during covid as part of the UK Ventilator Challenge consortium, evolving a new enterprise issue/material management software on a day-by-day basis, to empower the individuals involved in the production of ventilators. We covered the above points whilst sat next to the users in order to have immediate feedback on the usability of the tool. The approach was to provide each user group with only the essential information and functionality they needed, whilst ensuring the system was as user-friendly as possible, since time was critical and could literally mean the difference between life and death.

Conclusion

"....one of the things I’ve always found is that you’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards for the technology” Steve Jobs

IT and tech development teams must think of company employees as customers, therefore expanding their focus beyond creating the best technological solutions for the business to fostering seamless human-technology interactions, as the real value lies at the intersection where people and technology converges.

Many thanks to Neil for championing this topic.

What do you think? How can IT and developers better integrate design into their tech products?to drive both innovation and adoption?

We'd be happy to discuss in the comments!