How much respect does a UX working on internal tools garner? What are the advantages / disadvantages?
Yep. Most technical CTO will push bootstrap or dogfooding shitty frameworks.
Depends on the applications that you’re comparing. For example, a customer-facing application that no one uses will be less impressive than an internal application that supports a critical, revenue-driving business unit.
Customer facing = Will people be able to use it? Ship it! Internal = Is it Friday? Ship it!
Don’t think these quick and fast answers are necessarily nuanced enough. First off - if you have made good design decisions and the program helps people - you’re not likely to be denied a role because you did mostly b2b Work. Secondly - the world has mega companies - and doing things better within them (via tech) also has really positive monetary story as well. Thirdly - internal work is often more detailed and integral to what the company does (how it survives) so don’t think just because something is customer facing means you’re going to “learn more” If you want to say internal is lower priority than customer facing then yes you’re right generally but it’s like anything. It’s still a debt the company will have to make up at some point
There’s no internal tool teams doing KTLO work. The excuse of “they’ll figure it out because it’s their job” will keep popping up on every project, and doing any sort of customer research is a big challenge. The UX role isn’t much more than coloring someone else’s PPT mock-up to “make it look prettier”.
I think part of the problem is that there aren’t enough strong leaders advocating for great internal tools. Cost savings can be big if given enough attention and demand.
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Customer facing is more respected. Internal ux doesn’t drive company revenue and you rarely get enough traffic to have effective A/B testing or data driven decisions. Internal tools are more likely to be hobbled by tight cost control budgets. Also you are less likely to be working with the best developers on internal tools as most companies want their best working on things that generate money for the company. The advantage of internal ux is for someone who needs to learn the skills in an environment where the stakes aren’t so high or problems so public.
Internal tools UX are always compromised. From my individual growth perspective as well, I see it seldom creates value. I dont learn or grow