Enhancing Usability Through Cross-Enterprise Design Standards: The Luxce Model

Abstract

Managing a large, cross-enterprise portfolio raises challenges of usability at scale. Usable systems incorporate consistency and standards across the various components, with the sum being a seamless user experience even when developed by different teams. While this usability principle is well-known to user experience practitioners, implementing design standards for consistency is a continual challenge in the Department of Defense, with both government and private contractors working separately on different pieces of software. The Lean User Experience Center for Excellence (LUXCE) is a living example of a cross-institution collaboration aimed at identifying and applying standards to next-generation mission planning software. Our successful model of government-industry collaboration results in design standards applied daily to interfaces across a large, multi-faceted enterprise suite. We describe our process of establishing and maintaining LUXCE design standards with an emphasis on practical advice for enterprise-level government system development.