User feedback is a huge part of our process here at salesforce.com. We rely on our users’ input every day to help us improve our features. Today, we’d like to kick off a new tradition in the User Experience blog, where we highlight the impact our users have had on the design of Salesforce. In this first post, we’d like to tell you about Connect for Outlook’s functionality for associating Contacts (included in the Winter ‘09 release). The original user interface (UI) required a lot of steps and didn’t help the user prevent or recover from errors (See image below). 

Usability testing helped us create an easier to understand, more user-friendly solution.  We used an iterative process and conducted 2 rounds of usability testing (with both admins and sales users) to help improve this experience. User feedback was crucial in helping us improve the UI, starting with an initial design (see #1) and resulting in the final design (see #3).

One of the most challenging design issues was how to clearly communicate to users what Contact information was coming from Outlook and syncing to Salesforce. We made many changes to the dialog to help convey this information. Refer to the letters in the image above to help identify changes.

Banner and Icon Changes:

-    (A) The salesforce-like visual styling of the banner (see #1) was misleading since the contact was coming from Outlook, not Salesforce. Version #2 restyled this banner, and the final Version #3 incorporated the Name/Company/Manager information as part of the Outlook contact information. These changes helped users better understand the flow of information between the two systems.

• “What am I associating here again? I thought the contact hadn’t been added to Salesforce yet, but the big purple banner makes me think the opposite… I’m confused.” – Anonymous
  
  

-    (B) Salesforce.com icons were also included in the Status section to visually show that Contacts were being associated to Salesforce.

Other Key Changes:
-    (C) Change from dropdown for Association Type to Tabs
-    (D) Help text added
-    (E) Associate button label changed to ‘OK’
-    (F) Quick Create button placed next to Search

After multiple iterations, our final design (#3) tested extremely well with users in lab. This was just the start - more exciting changes coming soon to Outlook integration!

Stay tuned for more stories about how you’ve impacted the user experience of Salesforce!

Would you like to get involved in our user experience program to help improve salesforce.com? Fill out this quick survey or email us at tester@salesforce.com.