How to organise design process of a large desktop applications?

Question

Recently I've been tasked to design a large enterprise app and I am completely lost. An App flow — map of all screens with transitions between them — is vital for my design process and I can't apply it here.

Large application — non-transient enterprise-scale application with lots of objects, methods and several panes/tools visible at the same time in opposite to a website or mobile app that has few action per screen.

I know that what I ask for is too much but maybe someone can recommend some readings? I need a framework to track all objects, object views, methods — birds-view on whole app interface.

Answer 1

Are you completely redesigning this enterprise application? For most complex system with lots of pieces, it may not make the most sense attempting to fully map out everything. It is extremely time consuming and you can very easily get lost in all the details.

You may be better off using a top down strategic approach. Do some research to determine who are the primary users of your app. Figure out the major workflows for these users. Then map out the screens and interactions for these workflows. This should give you a sense of the key components of the system.

Only when you start redesigning a specific part of the system, does it make sense for you to do a deep dive into sub workflows. This is to ensure you don't miss anything during your redesign.