Our software team at IHS Markit set out to improve the usability of our engineering applications with the assistance of an in house interaction design group. Initially, we were skeptical of their lengthy design cycles and worried it would clash with our iterative development process. We experimented with developing our own fast prototypes while waiting on the design team and we were convinced we could proceed without their expertise.
Ultimately, we learned a humbling lesson: As subject matter experts we have an instinctive bias that we were injecting into our designs and influencing user test sessions. We realized the value of the design team’s expertise and that by partnering with others to design our software we can achieve better UX outcomes.
