User Experience Blog

Do you use a screen reader with Salesforce? We would like to talk to you!

Do you know someone who accesses Salesforce using JAWS, Window-Eyes, or other screen reader software? Are you such a person? The User Experience team seeks to connect with individuals who use screen reader software to interact with Salesforce. We are interested in gathering more first-hand knowledge about what makes the experience of using Salesforce with assistive technology (AT) as productive and enjoyable as it can be.

We would like to schedule in-person observations and interviews with qualified participants to see and hear about what's working well and what we can improve. Each participant will receive a gift certificate in appreciation of their time.

If you or someone you know would like to be contacted, send a note to tester@salesforce.com.

Agile2008 Conference Recap - Postcard Patterns

Last week, while Craig was in Aspen, Jason Winters, myself, and over a dozen Salesforce.com colleagues were in Toronto, Canada at the Agile2008 Conference. Jason and I were there to present some of our process innovations around the agile, and rapid, production of an interaction design Pattern Library. Don't know what we mean by "Pattern Library"? To quote wikipedia:

"In interaction design/HCI, an interaction design (ID) pattern is a general repeatable solution to a commonly-occurring usability or accessibility problem in interface design or interaction design."

Essentially, a library is a collection of documents designed to help you create usable and consistent software.

Our session was titled "Postcard Patterns: An Agile Pattern Creation Process". Traditionally, creating and maintaining a pattern library has been a daunting task requiring extensive resources and, sometimes, dedicated full-time employees.

In keeping with our development team’s agile transformation we revisited the process and invented Postcard Patterns – simple, visual documents that allow us to effectively drive consensus across teams with a lean communication tool. In contrast to our previous pace of 2 patterns in six months, we recently produced 43 patterns in less than three months.

Here's an example of one of our patterns.

For the session, we had a fantastic group of 25 attendees who made the session entertaining, enlightening and educational. The main thing we learned? Most User Experience teams, when taking on the challenge of documenting their interaction design patterns, encounter the same problems we did.

If you'd like to see our presentation, or those from my Salesforce.com colleagues and the rest of the Agile conference, check out slideshare.

Do you have any experience creating an interface design pattern library? Have any tips you'd like to share? Let us know!

Enterprise UI Summit Recap

Last week I had the good fortune of participating in a series of thought-provoking discussions at the Enterprise UI Summit in Aspen, Colorado.

The event was hosted by Jive Software and attendees included user experience experts from companies like SAP, Google, Adobe and RIM. The group shared design challenges, best practices, and visions for the future of enterprise software with an emphasis on the influence of the consumer Web and social software. Agenda items included:

- Show and Tell: Design Challenges, Process and Inspiration
- Microsharing in the Enterprise
- User Profiles: Best Practices from the Consumer Web
- Panel: Making Enterprise User Experience Better

Twitter was a surprisingly hot topic at the summit. Many attendees discussed how they have used Twitter to improve communication in personal and enterprise settings and the group debated the potential benefits and pitfalls of introducing these kinds of communication tools within a corporate environment. Personal (employee) profiles was another hot topic. In particular, the group discussed the questions of data portability, ownership of content, and integration with consumer sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn.

Many thanks to the friendly folks at Jive Software for hosting such a terrific event!

p.s. Get my take on enterprise software UI in this Enterprise UI Summit attendee profile.

Salesforce.com User Experience Team to Present at Agile 2008 Conference

If you’re heading to the Agile 2008 conference being held in Toronto from August 4th to the 8th, look for members of the salesforce.com User Experience team. We’ll be sharing our thoughts on Agile software development from our unique perspectives as interface designers and usability analysts.

Be sure to check out these sessions:

Postcard Patterns: An Agile Pattern Creation Process
Presented by Ian Swinson and Jason Winters

The Doctor is "In" - Using the Office Hours Concept to Make Limited Resources Most Effective
Presented by Andrea Leszek and Catherine Courage

The UX Graffiti Wall
Presented by Peter Roessler and Anshu Agarwal

About Agile 2008
Agile 2008 Conference, Toronto, August 4 to 8, 2008
http://www.agile2008.org/

About the salesforce.com User Experience Team
Usability is of utmost importance to salesforce.com. The User Experience team at salesforce.com is responsible for making sure that our features are easy to use, understand, and learn. We rely on the expert knowledge of our team of usability analysts, user interface designers, and graphic designers to accomplish these goals.

Are you a user experience professional?
We’re hiring UI Designers, Usability Analysts and Visual Designers

Going to any interesting conferences?
Let us know about them.

Want to learn more about salesforce.com’s design and usability processes?
Post a question and keep an eye on the User Experience Blog for more news and information.
Subscribe to the User Experience Blog

Salesforce and Internet Explorer 6

Today's release of Firefox 3 seemed like a good time to re-raise the issue of browser support and Salesforce.

Back in August 2007, I posted about Salesforce browser usage. At that time, Internet Explorer 6.0 usage represented about 65% of total browser logins, or just about 2 of every 3 users.

Since August, we’ve seen browser usage of our service change fairly dramatically.

You can see that IE7 usage has grown to around one-third of all users. And Firefox 2.0 usage has increased dramatically, to 14% of all users.

You can also see that IE6 usage has dropped a fair amount as users have upgraded or switched browsers. But more than half of all users still use IE6 when accessing Salesforce.

Why do we pay attention to browser usage? One reason is that recently we embarked on efforts to build the next-generation UI of Salesforce, which will include using JavaScript and other technologies that are, frankly, a challenge for IE6 to handle.

In addition to working on next-generation UI, we frequently wrestle with random, difficult-to-reproduce, hard-to-fix bugs in IE6. And while we admittedly love a challenge…working around bugs in older browsers isn't really how we want to spend our time. In fact, investigating and coming up with solutions for bugs that appear only in IE6 robs us of time we would rather spend on new feature development, which is what we love doing and where we believe our customers would also prefer we focus our efforts.

Rest assured, we are not planning to de-support IE6 any time soon. IE6 is still far too heavily used by our customer base, and upgrading to IE7 or switching to another browser is too much to ask in the short-term.

However, as time goes by and more of our users upgrade to IE7 or switch to other browsers like Firefox and Safari, we move closer to the day when we will drop official support for IE6.

Another factor to consider is that Microsoft has already released a beta version of Internet Explorer 8, with a generally available release some time in the next few months (who knows?).

Given all of this, we at salesforce.com have been contemplating how we can move away from IE6 support.

Are we going to de-support IE6 in a single release? No, absolutely not.

But our current thinking is that our next-generation UI enhancements, to be released starting later this year, will not be supported on IE6.

This does not mean you could not use IE6 with Salesforce. However, it would mean that you would not have access to UI enhancements unless you upgraded to IE7 or switched to another supported browser like Firefox or Safari.

Thoughts on this post? If you use IE6, does your company have plans to upgrade its users in the coming year? Leave a comment and let us know what you think.

Share and Enjoy,

Jerry Sherman
salesforce.com

P.S. With regard to Firefox 3 support: We usually target official support for major browser releases within 90 days of the initial release. Overall, we rarely see critical issues with Firefox, even from one major release to another. (I'm actually using FF3 right now to type this post and am logged into Salesforce in another tab.)

If you decide to try out Firefox 3, you will probably see some minor issues here and there--usually small cosmetic display problems. But in general it should work well with Salesforce. If you see anything more substantial, please tell us!

Notes from CHI Recap 2008

About 85 members of the Bay Area community of User Experience professionals convened at Salesforce's San Mateo location last Friday to participate in an informal all-day event, CHI Recap 2008. Moderated by Salesforce Sr. Usability Analyst Melissa Federoff, the agenda featured abbreviated versions of 10 sessions and panels delivered at last April's CHI conference in Florence, Italy.

Sessions and speakers featured at CHI Recap 2008:

Psychological Basis of UI Design Rules, Jeff Johnson, UI Wizards
They call it "Surfing" for a Reason: Identifying Mobile Interview needs through PC deprivation, Rachel Hinman, Adaptive Path
The Science of Fun: One-To-Many Moderated Game Research, Nate Bolt, Bolt | Peters
Branding the Feel: Applying Standards to Enable a Uniform User Experience, Mohini Wettasinghe, SAP
International User Research in the Product Development Cycle, Velynda Prakhantree, Oracle
What would you do with a 1 Million Dollar UX Marketing Budget? Internal vs. External User Experience Evangelism Panel, Peter Heller, Oracle
Longitudinal Usability Data Collection: Art versus Science?, Stephanie Rosenbaum, Tec-Ed Inc.
Tag-it, Snag-it, or Bag-it: Combining Tags, Threads, and Folders in E-mail, John Tang, IBM
CHI Policy Issues Around the World, Jeff Johnson, UI Wizards
Agile and UCD, Melissa Federoff, salesforce.com

Thanks to Melissa for moderating, to all who presented, and to everyone who participated in this spectacular event. Keep an eye on the CHI Recap 2008 website... slide decks will be posted as soon as author permission is confirmed.

Salesforce.com is Getting Software RITE

Salesforce's User Experience Team is featured in the May/June 2008 edition of IEEE Software Magazine. The article is the by-product of a recent visit from Jeff Patton, Agile Software Development consultant, teacher and coach. Jeff recently sat down with Catherine Courage (Director of User Experience) and Craig Villamor (Manager of Platform User Interface Design) to chat about the Salesforce design and usability evaluation process.

Abstract

Salesforce.com has used the RITE (Rapid Iterative Testing and Evaluation)method to quickly and iteratively improve its software design. RITE has helped the company retain high quality while increasing its rate of delivery using an agile development approach.

You can check out the article here:
http://csdl2.computer.org/persagen/DLAbsToc.jsp?resourcePath=/dl/mags/so/&toc=comp/mags/so/2008/03/mso03toc.xml&DOI=10.1109/MS.2008.62

Make your voice heard! Participate in product testing!

We are in constant need of Salesforce users to participate in our testing sessions. You don't even have to leave your desk! We run our sessions using Web conferencing software, so all you need is an internet connection, a phone, and a bit of time to spare. You're even rewarded with a gift card for your time and input.

If you are a Salesforce user and would be interested in helping us out, please fill out the form at http://www.clicktools.com/survey?iv=b4118a9b965b6ef so we can put you on our list! Sessions are typically run during work hours, but we can also accommodate early morning, lunchtime, and after work sessions.

Thanks for helping us to constantly improve Salesforce and make it the best product it can be for you and your business. If you have any questions or concerns, direct them to our research department email address at: tester@salesforce.com.

-- The Salesforce User Experience Team

Did you miss the CHI 2008 conference? Would you like to see and hear this year's conference highlights?

The Salesforce.com User Experience Team is hosting an all day event which will highlight some of the top presentations and papers from this year's CHI conference. For more information on this event and to register: http://www.chirecap2008.com/

The CHI conference is hosted yearly by ACM's Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction. For more information about ACM SIGCHI and the field of Computer-Human Interaction visit: http://www.sigchi.org/

Make your voice heard! Participate in product testing! Win an iPhone!

As a small token of our appreciation for signing up by April 4th, we will enter you into a sweepstakes to win an iPhone!

-- The Salesforce User Experience Team