Note: This was originally posted on the VMware OCTO blog 09/12/23
In the world of enterprise products geared towards an engineering user base, striking the right balance between functionality and usability is paramount for success. To ensure a seamless user experience and quicker time to value, it is essential to prioritize core functionality in the product GUI while reserving advanced capabilities for the API and CLI interfaces. This approach offers numerous benefits for product development and enhances the overall engagement of enterprise users with the product. Let’s look at five tenets of design geared toward realizing the simplicity paradox in your design practice.
1. Ease of learning and speedy onboarding
By focusing on core functionality within the product GUI, enterprises can provide a simple and intuitive interface for users to quickly learn and familiarize themselves with the software. A streamlined GUI minimizes distractions and promotes efficient onboarding, reducing the learning curve. Users can swiftly grasp the fundamental concepts and begin utilizing the product’s key features without feeling overwhelmed by complex interfaces.
2. Increased efficiency and cost-effectiveness
Designing enterprise products with a core-functionality-centric GUI offers significant benefits from both cost and speed perspectives in product development. With a simplified GUI, developers of products can concentrate on perfecting essential features, leading to faster development cycles and reduced resource requirements. By allocating fewer resources to GUI development, enterprises can focus more time and effort on improving the product’s core functionality and stability.
3. Flexibility and extensibility through APIs and CLIs
To cater to power users and provide access to advanced functionalities beyond the core feature set, a robust API and CLI become invaluable tools. Developing these interfaces with the utmost attention to user experience is essential, ensuring they are intuitive, efficient, and seamless to navigate.
The CLI offers a direct and efficient way to access advanced features quickly, granting power users greater control and customization possibilities.
Through the API, developers and platform engineers can integrate the product with other systems, automate tasks, and even extend the software to meet specific business requirements.
4. Seamless user experience
To ensure a seamless user experience, enterprises should integrate the CLI interface within the GUI by providing a link or a split-screen version. This allows users to seamlessly shift between GUI interactions and command-line operations from a single, unified environment. The ability to leverage the CLI within the GUI eliminates the need for users to switch between different interfaces, creating a cohesive and productive user experience. Additionally, integrating the CLI within the UI also provides for a lower barrier of entry regarding CLI install, setup, and initialization.
5. Agile adaptability and scalability
By keeping the product GUI focused on core functionality and reserving advanced features for API and CLI access, the enterprise product becomes more adaptable and scalable. As the product evolves and adds new features, existing GUI users won’t be overwhelmed by a sudden increase in complexity. Instead, they can explore additional functionalities at their own pace, requesting access to advanced features as needed without disrupting their workflow.
To ensure users are aware of additional functionalities beyond the core GUI, subtle tooltips, feature discovery walkthroughs, and contextual messages can be integrated, guiding them to explore advanced features accessible through API and CLI. For adjustments to SKUs related to advanced feature access, transparent in-app notifications and automated emails should communicate any changes or newly available, advanced functionality.
Embracing simplicity with user-informed product design
Enterprise products designed for today’s engineering teams should embrace the simplicity paradox by streamlining the GUI to focus on core functionality. This approach enables rapid onboarding, efficient development cycles, and cost savings while advanced capabilities are accessed through APIs and CLIs. By integrating the CLI within the GUI, enterprises provide a seamless user experience that enhances engagement and promotes productivity. Ultimately, this balanced approach benefits both product development and the savvy and highly technical enterprise users who rely on these powerful tools.