UX is Everything. Everything is UX. But Why?

I probably should have started my #UXisEverything series with this post. Instead, here we are. This isn’t about explaining why UX is everything - hopefully my other posts have made that case. It’s about why I keep making the point. Over and over. Relentlessly.

A couple of years ago, I stumbled across a LinkedIn post that got under my skin. It was aimed at ERP vendors and was apparently making the case for what customers do and don't want. It annoyed me. (Middle aged bloke angry at internet - shocker.)

The crux of the messaging was a call to vendors along the lines of:

"No-one cares about your platform, your cloud or your UI/UX.

Customers care about going live on time & in budget, improving KPI's, driving user adoption."

The dissonance between the "no-one cares about ... UI/UX" and "Customers care about ... user adoption" wound me up much more than it should have.

Annoyingly I lost track of the post and its author before I had a chance to respond. Obviously, creating a 'blog series and venting my spleen every now and then is a normal and proportionate substitute...

Why the annoyance?

Part of my frustration comes from the all-too-common confusion between UI and UX. Back in the early days of AgilityWorks, Anthony Cook used to joke about this all the time and it hasn't really got much better in the last 10 years. I’ve seen this blurring of UI and UX play out repeatedly, especially alongside SAP launching Fiori and all the noise, tools, and solutions it has spawned.

But my real issue with that LinkedIn post wasn’t just the UI/UX mix-up - it was the deeper misunderstanding of UX itself.

It demonstrated a fundamental disconnect between how people perceive UX and what it actually is. It showed how good UX keeps getting pushed down the list of priorities, filed under "we should say something about good UX at some point but we don't really care too much about it as it just sounds like something that will cost money and won't help us and the boss won't care and I don't care and so lets forget about it." Or thereabouts.

Let's break down aspects of that original post:

"No-one cares about your platform." Of course the infrastructure teams who run the systems care. So do the technical teams responsible for integrations. So do analytics teams who rely on these platforms to generate insights. (See the recent #SAP #BusinessDataCloud announcement as a case in point.) The CFO definitely cares, as without that platform, they aren't getting this month's reports or KPIs.

"No-one cares about your cloud." The head of manufacturing cares - they depend on 24/7 operations in multiple regions that cloud data sharing enables. The COO cares greatly about keeping their global operations running in sync. The CTO of a large retailer cares greatly about having enough compute power to handle Black Friday, using cloud elasticity to achieve it.

"No-one cares about your UI/UX." I'd argue everyone does. Literally anyone and everyone who touches your processes. Your employees. Your board. Your customers. Your partners. Your supply chain. The entire C-suite wants their respective LoB capabilities to be "the best". The point is, they all have different personas, require different aspects to be good, and likely have competing priorities. But they should all absolutely care about UX (and UI as a key component.)

I could go on, and on, and on (and most often do.)

UX is Everything.

I don't disagree that customers say they care about KPI's, and on-time & in-budget delivery, user adoption, and other things that are eminently sensible things to care about when you're running a business. They absolutely should care about those things.

But those are outcomes.

They are achieved by taking the right steps, using the right tools, and following the most appropriate methodologies, standards and frameworks.

UX is what connects all these moving parts. It’s not just a piece of the puzzle - it’s the framework that holds the whole thing together.

Because UX isn’t just about screens or software or UI.

It’s about outcomes.

It is Everything.