User Experience and DAM

by Holly Boerner

 

I recently had an interesting conversation with a Digital Asset Management (DAM) manager about trying to onboard a new user who hadn’t received formal training. The user quickly became frustrated and the DAM manager in turn expressed annoyance that most DAM practitioners could probably relate to—people need to follow proper training practices and take the time to learn how to use the system if they want to use it successfully.

I’ve been that DAM manager, and I’ve expressed similar sentiments in the past. And on one level, I remain heartily in agreement with the manager’s strategy—user education efforts (along with program governance and communication initiatives) are key to acclimating users to DAM technology.

But on another level, the challenge described here evokes a bigger, longer standing issue native to DAM—why is the DAM user experience so complicated that it requires formal education and communication? Why can’t DAM provide a great native User Experience that is easy and intuitive?

User Experience (UX) is being talked about everywhere in technology these days, as it is increasingly recognized as a fundamental component in the development of websites, applications and general consumer products. User Experience should be understood as the breadth of elements that collectively influence the experience individuals have navigating technology. Ease of use is finally starting to catch on as a priority in DAM as well. DAM vendors and practitioners are coming to recognize UX as an important element with a unique power: the ability to draw users to a system, and by extension, decisively slay the user adoption dragon.

Currently, systems and applications, even more than consumer-facing websites, are being recognized as the entities that demand smart and anticipatory UX. This may seem paradoxical but it is actually quite logical: applications can run circles around websites when it comes to facilitating a wide, diverse functionality landscape. Good UX is key to providing users with that breadth of functionality in such a way as it can be intuitively learned, employed and adopted. For this reason, good UX should be a functional requirement in DAM programs. When user adoption is secured, DAM project goals can be achieved:

Asset discoverability and monetization
Asset use compliance to protect against legal and monetary risk
Analytics-driven insight into asset use and value

UX in DAM is critical to user adoption  and DAM vendors are treating it as an 11 on a 1-10 priority development scale.

If you’re curious to learn more about DAM and UX, please read Optimity Advisor’s Orange Paper, UX in DAM.  And if you’ll be attending the Henry Stewart DAM NY conference on May 7, come to the breakfast session Optimity will be hosting on DAM & UX.

The good news is that strong, pleasing UX is becoming an achievable goal. This is a welcome development, and a critical step in securing the user adoption and DAM program success that will drive overall business growth and achievement.

 

 

Holly Boerner is a Manager at Optimity Advisors