Skip to content

Tiina Golub, writing in UX Collective, points at the right version of “personalization” for enterprise software:

I have spent most of my career working on the large-scale computer programs designed to operate and automate complex business processes for big organisations, known as enterprise software. Due to their size and complexity, these products are often slow to innovate, relying on outdated usability principles and legacy systems long after the rest of the industry has moved on. However, recent technological advances (yes, I’m mostly talking about AI) have both enabled and compelled them to evolve at an unprecedented pace. No one can tell for sure what the future will look like, but there are some clear trends reshaping the user experience of enterprise software right now.

The interesting part is not that enterprise tools should start feeling like consumer apps. That usually leads to dashboards with the user’s name on them and a recommendation panel nobody asked for. The better version is software that understands the work well enough to reduce how much process the user has to remember.

That makes AI less useful as a standalone feature and more useful as embedded guidance:

No longer a stand-alone feature, AI is increasingly woven into the fabric of the interface, deeply embedded into every workflow, and offering contextual guidance right when the user needs it.

That is the useful frame: enterprise personalization is not taste. It is role, permission, workflow state, and organizational context. The product gets “personal” when it knows what kind of decision the user is trying to make, what constraints surround that decision, and what help belongs at that exact moment.

Subscribe for updates

Get weekly (or so) post updates and design insights in your inbox.