Intersection: How Enterprise Design Bridges the Gap Between Business, Technology, and People

When people book a flight, search for colleagues, place an order, or apply for a job today, they do it using a variety of digital technologies and media. These interactions with an organization have become the basis for any business success, connecting a business to customers, employees, vendors and partners. For the people being addressed, these systems are more than just tools or media: they act as the face of the organization. Yet today, people find themselves dealing with an overwhelming mass of isolated information and disconnected IT tools that fail to make relevant information easy to find, functionality easy to use and goals easy to achieve... This book introduces a strategic design framework to consciously shape what people interacting with an organization will experience. This approach is called Enterprise Design. It cuts through the complexity of designing at an enterprise level to achieve consistency in the way an enterprise looks, behaves, and communicates with the help of business technology. The goal of this approach is to create an overarching design adapted for the various people and use contexts, ultimately leading to better individual experiences at each relevant touch point. The approach enables organizations to hide technical systems behind their purpose, making them less visible yet much more useful for people and business contexts they are designed for. The book is broken into three main parts. In the first part, Enterprise Design is explored and defined. In the second part, a conceptual design framework is laid out, and in the final part, details and methods of putting the framework into action are covered. Using this approach, businesses can make better design decisions, which result in an integrated system that provides relevant touch points for those interacting with them.