User Experience Blog
User Experience Blog - November 2009
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Dreamforce Recap: The New Salesforce CRM for Outlook
Nov 25, 2009The User Experience and Outlook teams at Salesforce.com would like to thank you for all of your enthusiasm and feedback during Dreamforce! We are very excited to be working on the new Salesforce CRM for Outlook product and it’s your constant feedback that has helped guide the direction of the new integration.
For those of you who weren’t able to attend, you can watch the “Ready to Rock Your Productivity?” session online to get a sneak peak of where we are headed. Key highlights include:
Simple Email Logging
No more several step processes in Outlook to log a single email. With 1 click, your email will be sent and logged in Salesforce. It’s that simple!Set-it-and-forget-it Synchronization
We will seamlessly sync your data behind the scenes every 10 minutes without interrupting your work. Sync status and other options will be available from the new system tray icon.Administration in the Cloud
Our new integration will be easy to roll out to your organization. Administrators simply create one configuration for each specific user type or group of users. They can set which objects can be synced, which direction(s) they’d like data to flow, set conflict resolution, write data set filters, and more.Your feedback is important. To share your ideas and get a sneak preview of future functionality, please sign up for usability testing. We look forward to speaking with you soon!
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Graphical Approval Process Editor - Part 3: Winter '09 release and beyond
Nov 23, 2009In this post we will discuss features that just came out this past release, and we will also give a sneak peek into up and coming functionality such as editing processes inside the visualizer. To read Part 1 go here and Part 2 go here.
New Printable View and Find features released in Winter '09
For Winter ’10 our priority was to release Printable View and complete R1 (the read-only phase of the project). In addition to Printable View, we decided to tackle additional problems based on user feedback from IdeaExchange such as being able to search for terms inside the process, and being able to easily navigate large processes with navigator and zoom controls. In terms of the design process, it was easier and more efficient for us to create mockups based on the Flex build instead of creating another HTML prototype, which simply wouldn’t be scalable going forward with all of the additional features we had planned.
Once the new features were in a working state we scheduled another round of usability tests. One of the things that we experimented with was the location of the Find bar. In some of the earlier designs we placed it at the bottom of the screen, similar to how Firefox’s Ctrl+F works. In the user tests we found that users had trouble discovering the feature so we decided to put it in the top right-hand corner instead, which is another conventional and more discoverable location for Find controls. Overall the test results indicated that users loved the ability to use the process visualizer to facilitate documentation and communication, and we felt confident that we had successfully completed the read-only phase of the project.
“So if I can use this as documentation, right off that bat that would be an improvement for me… It writes better than I could write a flow chart. It totally makes sense… I really, really like this stuff.” - salesforce.com Administrator
Drag and drop workflow actions into the diagram.
Edit or remove diagrams directly in the visualizer
Beginning in the Spring ’10 Release we will start working on introducing edit capabilities into the visualizer. Our long-term vision is to eventually replace the current Approval Process UI in setup with Flex technology, which includes the act of browsing, creating, and editing processes. Obviously this is a significant undertaking, and we have found that setting a realistic scope of features that can be tackled within a release has been key for both team motivation and end-user adoption.
The first set of functionality that we plan on building is adding and removing workflow actions from the process. To do this we plan on adding an “Action Sidebar” which has a sortable, searchable list of workflow actions that the user can drag and drop into the diagram. We also plan on being able to remove and edit diagram elements through a toolbar that appears when you hover over an item. Similar to the previous release, we are using the most recent Flex build as a base for mocking up new functionality.
To make sure that we were heading in the right direction in regards to both utility and usability, we ran several concept validation sessions with salesforce administrators. In these sessions we presented the mockups and asked if they made sense, and we also asked participants to prioritize features in our backlog to get some insight on what we should work on first. The top 3 feature requests were finding and replacing items in the process, reordering steps via drag and drop, and timeout / reminder settings (e.g. reject the request after 3 days pass or remind approvers of pending requests every day).
“[Referring to Timeout Settings] I’ve actually had to try and come up with a workflow rule to do exactly this and I haven’t been able to do it, so from a feature function set that is definitely up there, and that’s a great thing – there’s a workaround for the PDF, but there isn’t one for the timeout” - salesforce.com Administrator
Going forward we definitely plan on conducting additional user tests as we continue to work on the Graphical Approval Process Editor feature. If you are interested in participating in usability tests fill out this quick survey or email us at tester@salesforce.com. If you are currently using the Approval Process Visualizer feature and have ideas on how to improve it, make sure to let us know by submitting them to IdeaExchange! -
User Feedback is Critical to our Success: A Look at the Year to Date
Nov 16, 2009As Marni and Beril had mentioned in their earlier blog posts on Connect for Outlook and Data Categories, user feedback is an integral part of what we do here at salesforce.com. Throughout a feature’s design phase, our Designers, Product Managers, Usability Analysts, and Researchers all work together to create designs, evaluate these designs with our customers, and redesign our feature with this customer feedback in mind.
Looking at this year just from January 1st to November 1st, we’ve spent over 800 hours testing our features with customers; that’s over 33 days! In total, 433 of our customers from 357 different companies have participated in 108 of these sessions.If you have participated in any of these sessions, we’d like to thank you. We hope that these numbers are able to convey how important your feedback is to us. If you haven’t yet participated, but are interested in joining the hundreds of customers that have helped us make our product better, please sign up using the link below.
Participate as often as you like, frequently or infrequently, it’s up to you. Most studies last an hour or less and you don’t even have to leave your home or workplace – just be near a phone and on a computer connected to the Internet. Because we know your time is valuable, in return for your help we’re happy to provide a gift certificate to Amazon.com (usually $50 or $100 depending on the study). -
A Whole Team of Professionals Focused on You
Nov 16, 2009We talk a lot about what the User Experience team does here at Salesforce, but we thought you might also like to know a little bit about who we are and how we work together to ensure customer success.
The salesforce.com User Experience (UE) team is made up of many complementary roles, including: User Researchers, User Interface (UI) Designers, Usability Analysts, Visual Designers, and Accessibility Experts. Each of these roles has a distinct function within the product development process. Here’s a little about each role:
User Researchers: The User Researchers on our team provide up-front, early research about customer needs. They may conduct site visits at your workplace to learn more about how you use Salesforce in your day-to-day environment, conduct in-person focus groups, or other activities to learn more about you. The information they collect is used to inform the product design process.
UI Designers: Salesforce.com’s UI Designers work closely with their product teams to design the screens that you interact with on a daily basis. Depending on the phase of the project, you’ll find UI Designers sketching, mocking up screens and process flows, or prototyping an interactive design for you to play with in usability testing.
Usability Analysts: The UE team’s Usability Analysts work to provide product teams with unbiased customer feedback. If you’ve ever participated in a usability study, you’ve probably spoken to them over the phone during one of our many usability tests. In these 1:1 sessions, Usability Analysts rely on your feedback to ensure that the product designs are easy to understand and use.
Visual Designers: We also have talented Visual Designers on our team. Responsible for the aesthetics and overall look-and-feel of Salesforce, these designers specialize in color selection, iconography and layouts.
Accessibility Experts: The UE team also has Accessibility Experts who provide the product teams with best practices and recommendations to ensure that our products are accessible to everyone, including those with disabilities (often referred to as 508 compliance).
So, that’s our team! It’s a pretty great group of people all focused on making our users successful. If you’ve participated in any of our usability tests or other activities, we’d like to thank you. Your participation is key to our success. If you’d like to learn more about participating fill out this quick survey or email us at usability@salesforce.com.
The UE team is still growing, so if you’re a User Experience professional interested in joining us, please check out the jobs listed below:
Sr. Visual Designer
http://www.salesforce.com/company/careers/locations/a0800000000Ab4bAAC/a017000000GuK4M.jspSr. UI Designer
http://www.salesforce.com/company/careers/locations/a0800000000Ab4bAAC/a017000000GvgLo.jspUsability Analyst
http://www.salesforce.com/company/careers/locations/a0800000000Ab4bAAC/a017000000Gvfu0.jsp -
Graphical Approval Process Editor - Part 2: Summer '09 beta release
Nov 13, 2009We knew that the graphical approval process editor was going to be a multi-release project, so we decided to break it up into 2 phases: a read-only diagram (R1) and a full-on graphical editor (R2). In this blog we will talk about how we approached the design for R1. To read Part 1, click here.
HTML/JavaScript Prototype
Due to the visual complexity of the project, it was important to build and test an interactive prototype before starting any development work. We wanted to make sure that we were successfully translating the traditional detail page into a diagram that was navigable, scalable, and logical to users. The functionality of the prototype also helped the team decide which technology to use to build the feature, which ended up being Flex due to its wide adoption and ability to easily generate dynamic graphics.
The original prototype was created using HTML and JavaScript and included basic interactions such as hovering over an item to see its details, clicking to expand and see individual actions, Printable View, and an intermediate solution for editing components in the diagram. The initial idea was that double-clicking an item would open it in the traditional salesforce edit mode in another window, however when we tested it with salesforce administrators we found that this was confusing and decided to wait on editing capabilities until it could be done completely within the visualizer.
“I would love for it to look like your inline editor, instead of putting me on this other page… that seemed a little clunky to jump in and out of the graphical version.” - salesforce.com Administrator
Summer '09 Beta Release in Flex
The other finding that came out of the first round of testing was that Printable View was a huge success. Unfortunately due to time constraints we were unable to include it in the Summer ‘09 Release. We knew that Printable View was necessary in order for the feature to be complete, however we also felt that the work we had done to visualize processes provided enough value to justify a Beta release for all users. In order to receive additional user feedback we placed a link to salesforce’s IdeaExchange in the header. This has proven to be a successful method of communicating with our customers, and will be included in more features down the road!
In Part 3 we will discuss the final release of the visualizer and the edit functionality we are currently working on. -
Follow us on Twitter!
Nov 12, 2009Do you use Twitter? If so, we'd like to let you know that you can now follow the Salesforce User Experience team. Through Twitter, we're able to share real-time information about our team so that you can get a sense of how we work, where we work and what inspires us (hint: it has a lot to do with our customers). Speaking of inspiration, next week we'll be tweeting our way through Dreamforce 09, our annual user conference, so stay tuned for some fun and interesting tweets!
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User Feedback Matters: How our users inspired the design of Data Categories
Nov 11, 2009In this second post in the series, User Feedback Matters (see our first post), we will tell you about how customer feedback impacted a brand new Salesforce feature, Data Categories.
Last year, Salesforce acquired an on-premise Knowledge Management application and tasked several product teams with its redesign and implementation on the Salesforce platform. A key part of the existing Knowledge Management application was the ability to create data category hierarchies that allow administrators to classify knowledge articles and help users find the specific records they are looking for. The Data Categories team was created with the goal of redesigning and moving this functionality onto our platform.
Step 1: Understanding the Needs of Knowledge Managers
We conducted multiple interviews with our existing Knowledge Management customers to understand how they used the existing application and to learn what they liked and disliked about it. They mentioned that managing categories in the current application required too many clicks and that the hierarchy of data categories was not as clearly represented as they would like.Step 2: Customer Evaluation
We iterated on several design concepts based on feedback from our customer interviews until we arrived at a promising design. This design included some new interaction and layout patterns that would need more validation. To validate our designs, we conducted 2 rounds of usability sessions [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usability_test]. The sessions included administrators of the current Knowledge Management application as well as Salesforce administrators who hadn't used the Knowledge Management product. The first session focused on validating the overall design concept and the second session focused on more detailed interactions in the design. You can see the results below.
What We Tested 1st Round What We Did 2nd Round What We Did Two-pane layout and hierarchy structure Users found this intuitive Terminology It wasn't clear that "Category Type" meant a container for categories Changed "Category Type" to "Category Group" The new label was clear to users Deleting categories Users misinterpreted the messaging and assumed they were deleting both the category and the records associated with it Adjusted the message to more clearly indicate that records wouldn't be deleted but would be moved to the parent category Users now understood the message but wanted more control over where the records would be moved to Added another step after the delete confirmation giving users different options to re-categorize the records Drag and Drop Drag and drop functionality was not discoverable Added visual aid to highlight drag and drop capability It wasn't clear to users where in the hierarchy they were dragging and dropping a category Revised drag and drop target indicator to highlight the exact location that the category is being moved to Keyboard Shortcuts Users found keyboard shortcuts easy to use Users had difficulty discovering the tips for keyboard shortcuts
Added visual aid to emphasize tips
Based on the feedback from round 2, it looked like the new design was a success:
I think [my staff] would be very pleasantly surprised by this. I think it would make their jobs a lot more efficient.” – Anonymous
Watch the video below to see the final design!
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.
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Follow-up on North Bay AGILE Meeting outcomes
Nov 11, 2009
As a follow-up to our (Anshu Agarwal & Peter Roessler) previous 2 postings (‘Team Members Hosting the North Bay Agile August Meeting’ and ‘Salesforce.com User Experience Team to Present at Agile 2008 Conference’), we wanted to quickly fill you in on some of the latest details regarding our research.The North Bay Agile meeting (August 2009) was a huge success, with ~30 attendees from all over the Bay Area in different Agile roles (i.e. User Experience, Scrum Masters, Developers, Product Owners, Management).
During the 2 hour meeting, participants posted new comments to the Graffiti Wall, discussed ideas with other Agile practitioners, and had the opportunity to socialize and network over dinner.
Due to the event’s success, salesforce.com plans to host similar events for Bay Area organizations (i.e. Bay APLN, IxDA, BayCHI) in the future. If you are interested in hosting an event within San Francisco at the salesforce.com office, please contact researcher@salesforce.com.
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Going to Dreamforce? Meet the User Experience Team and win a Kindle!
Nov 10, 2009While at this year’s Dreamforce conference, drop by the Next Generation Designs booth at the campground to meet the User Experience Team. We’ll give you a sneak peek at our latest designs and tell you how you can get involved in our feedback sessions so that you can help shape the future Salesforce. If you sign up to participate in our program, you will be entered into a drawing for an Amazon Kindle.
Also come check out our Customer Hero Theater presentation at the Campground: How customer feedback shapes our next generation designs. Peter Roessler and Scott Kincaid will be presenting on Wednesday, November 18 @ 2:30 and Thursday, November 19 @ 1:30.
We hope to see you at Dreamforce this year!
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Graphical Approval Process Editor - Part 1: How do our customers work with and think about approval processes?
Nov 6, 2009
For a long time we've understood that creating approval processes was often a tedious and complicated endeavor. For example, it took 5 steps to define a process, 3 steps to define an approver, and numerous clicks to add workflow actions. Furthermore, the detail page layout (shown left in the graphic above) made it difficult to troubleshoot, find process elements, or understand the flow of the process. The first thing we did after we decided to redesign this feature was talk to our users to better understand how they would ideally like to create approval processes.In one of our earliest activities, we asked a group of salesforce administrators to construct a hypothetical approval process using either a text-based or graphic-based tool. Not surprisingly, we learned that diagrams played a huge role in conceptualizing, planning, and communicating approval processes. We also discovered that it was quite common for a salesforce.com administrator to be given a diagram of the process they were asked to implement, which they had to then translate into our largely text and form-based interface. On the flip side we found that some administrators were asked to create a diagram of the process they just implemented in order to make it accessible to others. Clearly, we had a great opportunity to make these tasks easier by allowing administrators to graphically construct, visualize, and export their process for communication purposes.
Taking the Middle Road
One thing we noticed in our early activities was that our users varied on whether they felt more comfortable creating approval processes in a linear fashion (e.g. fleshing out the details for each approval step before moving on) or in a top-down manner (e.g. first specifying the number of steps, then setting the approvers, then adding actions, etc). For this reason, we decided that an early requirement for the design would be to let users quickly and successfully construct their processes in either style. Another early investigation was how strongly we should adhere to Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN). BPMN is a specification for modeling business processes that provides standards for how to represent process elements graphically. In our early usability testing, we found that although some of our users are familiar with this notation, the majority of our users were confused by some of the more specific graphical conventions. For this reason, we chose to adhere to the more common graphical representations like Events (circles), Activities (expandable/collapsable boxes), and Gateways (diamonds), but not to introduce more complex elements like Swimlanes.
From Concept to Implementation
Although we had done enough early investigations to achieve a more complete view of the existing editor's shortcomings and how our users preferred to work, we still had a long road to travel. We needed to test and validate our design direction, figure out what technology can be used to support the functionality our users wanted, and plan how to appropriately split this feature across multiple-releases. In Parts 2 and 3, David and I will talk about some of the designs we considered, obstacles we faced, and insights we gained while creating the Summer '09 read-only Graphical Approval Process Visualizer and the upcoming fully-featured Graphical Approval Process Editor.
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