In his book The Human Instinct, Kenneth R. Miller makes a rather revealing observation: "A subset of carbon atoms, namely the ones in our brain, can think, while other carbon atoms do no more than allow a pencil to darken a sheet of paper." Although science doesn't conclusively understand thoughts or emotions (or their interplay), what we do know is that they dictate almost everything we do. This is why businesses have been striving to grow the capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) and have been paying more attention to user experience (UX) than ever before. While most B2C applications have a rather fantastic UX that engages and hooks users, a surprising number of enterprise applications seem to have a rather studied disregard for UX. That's almost inexplicable because poor UX discourages users from wholeheartedly embracing what otherwise might often be great products.

If you enjoy intellectual challenges and designing experiences that impact millions of people, enterprise UX could be right for you. In 2005, YouTube was born, Google had just acquired Android, Yahoo! was a popular search engine, and there was no Netflix, Twitter, or Spotify. In that same year, I was asked to build up and manage my first visual design team. In those still formative years of the internet and hence modern user experience (UX), it was unusual – at least in Europe – to find a visual designer trained in human-computer interaction. So, I hired what I could find: talented graphic designers, most of whom had experience creating work for print and the web, but who had no idea about designing software.