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In any project, it is important to gain an understanding of the users' expectations, experiences, and needs to deliver a positive outcome. We want to thank you for coming to the Continue building better workflows by understanding your users lab. Below you will find a recap of the lab, a list of resources that will help you research journey and opportunities to participant in ServiceNow research. Its worth mentioning that this framework is not limited to building a product and is applicable to many strategic initiatives, and especially relevant to those responsible for implementing and managing ServiceNow workflows in their organizations.  Why understanding your users is important Understanding your users ensures you deliver a solution rather than an invention. A solution implies the product takes into account user's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Additionally, understanding your users allows you to learn about their needs. User needs are key to product success as building for user needs increases the probability of success. To identify needs effectively, it requires a systematic and continuous process of understanding your users, thus, following the research process will guide you on your journey. Overview of the research process     At a high level, these are the milestones for a research project. All are important in their own way, but identifying research objectives deserves a special call out. Clear research objectives are important because they establish direction. Research with unclear direction will not be conducted effectively because if you have vague direction you will get vague results. Research objectives also have implications for your study's methodology and general logistics because you make these decisions based on what puts you in the best position to answer your questions. Qualities of great research objectives Generally you want to have 3 - 5 objectives per study. The concern with having more is that you spread yourself to thin and reduce the quality of your findings. Open ended and consider cause and effect This refers to focusing on a topic with substance and sets you up to explore the interconnectedness of users. Provide a path for more follow research Compelling objectives often lead to more questions, which requires more research.  Pass the so what test Meaning they are of relevant and interest to others, usually tied to a business goal or something relevant going on at your organization. UX Research Methods       There is no best method or type of research. There are many factors that go into selecting which one you should employ, but the choice is primarily driven by your research objectives. Other factors you should consider: General logistics Time Access to end users Level of confidence in findings How much data to collect? What's more important than how many users you collect data from is that you are collecting data from people who are most representative of your end user. Generally, when conducting qualitative research the sample size is smaller whereas in quantitative research the sample size is larger.   It is important to remember that they are people and not just test subjects that provide data. You must keep ethics in mind regarding the types of questions you ask, obtaining consent to collect data, and how you handle and protect the collected data.   Writing your discussion guide A discussion guide is a written roadmap of your interview conversation and the questions you want to ask.     Tips for structuring the questions in your discussion guide Group related questions together Start broad and then get more specific Be mindful of question order Tips for writing good interview questions Open ended (What.., how..., why..., tell me about...) Avoid leading questions Moderating an interview Tips to moderate like a pro Involve your stakeholders Have an observer/notetaker Remember to stay neutral Resist the urge to explain Analysis Tips for analyzing data Check hypothesis and identify themes Categorize or tag your data in a tool (ex., Excel, Miro)         Suggested reading: Want to learn more about UX research methods and strategy? Here are some places to get started: NN/g Nielsen Norman Group MeasuringU dscout User Interviews UserTesting   Sign up to participate in ServiceNow research studies! We want to ensure we are providing the best possible experience for all customers. To achieve this, we need your help to understand your ServiceNow experiences and needs. Research studies can range from 2 to 90 minutes, with compensation (if eligible). Learn more here or sign up now.

Learn how to use the best tool to identify opportunities to improve your workflows​     Changing workflows is really hard.​ It's time consuming and costly. It requires getting buy-in from countless stakeholders who often have competing priorities. When you fail, you can make enemies and burn bridges. Your hard work will go unnoticed and unappreciated as your users will just go back to their old ways of doing things. No matter how bad those ways might be.   That means it's imperative that when we change a workflow, we get it right. So, how do we do it? While transforming a business processes is a complex, multi-step ballet, there is one tool that stands above all others when it comes to finding opportunities to improve your workflows the right way. That tool? The journey map. A journey map is a visual storyline of a user's experience. Don't let word "visual" scare you. Yes, people do make wonderfully beautiful and overwhelmingly ornate journey maps, but that's just for show. To get the real value? All you need is some post-its and a wall or your favorite digital white boarding tool.  A journey map must be based in evidence, not assumptions. They represent real behaviors, not those we imagine. Journey maps can be made based on one user's experience, but they are far more valuable when they represent a summary of multiple, ideally 5-10, users' experiences. This allows you to learn if one person has a unique experience that you should not design around or if there are common challenges across your users. Journey maps can be fairly simple, tracking one type of users', for example all your company's junior attorneys, experience of a workflow. They can also be far more complex, showing how multiple types of users interact to achieve a common goal through a workflow. Both have value. It's when you identify those opportunities for improvement across your user groups that you maximize organizational value. Finally, journey maps can illustrate multiple states or versions of your workflow. The first, the current state journey map, illustrates your users' experience as it is today. This tool allows us to identify pain points, inefficiencies, unmet needs, and opportunities to improve our workflows. The second, the future state journey map, allows you to put that learning to action by charting ideal future state workflows that will help you achieve your goals.  Join this session to learn how to put this powerful tool into action to maximize the value of your investment in ServiceNow. 

Employee Center has a nice hero illustration with a prompt to search for help. A common pattern I’ve seen is customizing with a Welcome message for the current user. Let’s expand on this a bit and include a diverse welcome message that rotates greetings in different languages.    

Thank you to all of you who attended the Knowledge Leading Practices session "Self Service Leading Practices".  To create more effortless help experiences for your users, check out these resources:  From the Experts: UX Leading Practices - Self-service Self-Service Analytics Success Playbook: Improve self-service with ServiceNow    We'd also love to continue our conversation with you about product UX!  To share your product experiences with the ServiceNow Insights team and help improve how they work, sign up to be a Product Lab member.  

After almost 12 months in a private pilot, we are excited to invite all of the ServiceNow community to download and leverage our Figma libraries when prototyping customer solutions for Employee Center, Mobile, Classic Environment, and Next Experience.  

Here are some additional links including definitions, overviews, and best practices for creating well organized content, taxonomies, and information architecture.   Definitions and Overviews https://www.nngroup.com/articles/taxonomy-101/ Information and Information Architecture - The Big Picture   Content Organization Workshops How to conduct a Card Sort Improving Information Architecture through Card Sorting   Key Performance Indicators Measuring outcomes is an important way to determine how usable your experience is. Here are 4 Questions you can ask and related KPIs to identify if you have a content organization problem.  Can they find it? The task success rate (TSR) - TSR measures number of correctly executed tasks. If a task has a clearly defined endpoint e.g., filling out a form or buying a product – you can measure the TSR. However, it must be clear which objectives you consider a success. It doesn't measure their journey, but can measure how many people were able to get to the end of it. How long did it take to find it? Time-on-task (TOT) - TOT describes the time (in mins and secs) that a user needs to complete a task successfully. The average time-on-task is usually communicated as the final UX KPI. Basically, the shorter the processing time, the better the user experience. How many mistakes did they make when trying to find it? User error rate (URR) - The user error rate, tracks how frequently users make mistakes during a specific task. Measuring this can help you identify where users face difficulties with your product. This information can be used to develop future product updates and UX designs. What percentage of users were able to find it? Conversion Rate (CR) - The conversion rate measures how many people or new visitors complete tasks such as signing up, completing the free trial and converting to a paid account, etc.   Content Organization Creation and Testing Tools Optimal Workshop UserZoom UsabilityTools   Now Learning Course Check out AJ Siegel's Now Learning course on UX Leading Practices!

Here are some additional links including definitions, overviews, and best practices for creating well organized content, taxonomies, and information architecture.   Definitions and Overviews https://www.nngroup.com/articles/taxonomy-101/ Information and Information Architecture - The Big Picture   Content Organization Workshops How to conduct a Card Sort Improving Information Architecture through Card Sorting   Key Performance Indicators Measuring outcomes is an important way to determine how usable your experience is. Here are 4 Questions you can ask and related KPIs to identify if you have a content organization problem.  Can they find it? The task success rate (TSR) - TSR measures number of correctly executed tasks. If a task has a clearly defined endpoint e.g., filling out a form or buying a product – you can measure the TSR. However, it must be clear which objectives you consider a success. It doesn't measure their journey, but can measure how many people were able to get to the end of it. How long did it take to find it? Time-on-task (TOT) - TOT describes the time (in mins and secs) that a user needs to complete a task successfully. The average time-on-task is usually communicated as the final UX KPI. Basically, the shorter the processing time, the better the user experience. How many mistakes did they make when trying to find it? User error rate (URR) - The user error rate, tracks how frequently users make mistakes during a specific task. Measuring this can help you identify where users face difficulties with your product. This information can be used to develop future product updates and UX designs. What percentage of users were able to find it? Conversion Rate (CR) - The conversion rate measures how many people or new visitors complete tasks such as signing up, completing the free trial and converting to a paid account, etc.   Content Organization Creation and Testing Tools Optimal Workshop UserZoom UsabilityTools   Now Learning Course Check out AJ Siegel's Now Learning course on UX Leading Practices!

Many ServiceNow projects involve a large inventory of catalog items, knowledge articles and other content. For users to find the right content efficiently, organization is key. Learn how to gain quick and early insights from your users on how they expect content to be organized using a classic UX method: card sorting.   We've attached a slide deck, example interview script, and example data collection sheet for Knowledge 2023 to help you learn more about card sorting, as well as to practice it on your own!

ServiceNow's technology is powerful. This isn't news to anyone reading this blog post. We all know ServiceNow can be the engine to power your company's digital transformation dreams. But if you're not considering User Experience, you're not getting the most out of your ServiceNow investment. Why? Because building great workflows requires more than just great technology. It requires an understanding of the people those workflows serve; their needs, pain points, and goals. In our Knowledge23 Lab session, Patrick Healy and I outlined a 5 step plan to encorporate UX methods and tools into your next business process transformation project. It might seem like a lot to learn at first, but the great news is this plan works for any business process. Whether you are reimagining employee onboarding, finding new efficiencies in supply chain management, or something else entirely, you can use these steps time and time again to build business processes that work for people.    

Accessibility is an important part of all digital experiences — and at ServiceNow, we believe that everyone should have the opportunity to use our Platform and Products. What this means, is that we design with all backgrounds, abilities, disabilities, and various needs in mind to ensure that we can offer the most inclusive experience possible.   Thank you for coming to the Accessibility Leading Practices presentation and Designing for Accessibility pod at Knowledge 2023. Here is a list of resources and tools we know that you will enjoy, learn from, and use to improve the accessibility of your ServiceNow instances and implementations.       ❗Important quick links Accessibility Leading Practices presentation This presentation (PDF is also located at the bottom of this article) covers how ServiceNow makes products accessible as a collective team, along with 6 leading practices and tools to help you be successful today.   Sign up to participate in ServiceNow accessibility research studies! We want to ensure we are providing the best possible experience for all customers and ensure our products are accessible for everyone. To achieve this, we need your help to understand your ServiceNow experiences and needs. Research studies can range from 2 to 90 minutes, with compensation (if eligible). Learn more here or sign up now.     Design & Research Tools Order your Accessibility cards For the first time, ServiceNow is releasing our accessibility cards! These cards are to be used side-by-side with your organization’s personas (target users) and highlights major differences and solutions people with disabilities may encounter when interacting with digital experiences, along with listed solutions. This was created and driven by primary and secondary research, and can be used by anyone in your organization. Order here now to get your free cards shipped to your home (please enter your work email and use access code: a11y).   Design annotation templates Our Figma accessibility design annotation template  (located in the ServiceNow Figma community profile) includes annotation options for labeling many common needs for accessibility. This includes color contrast, keyboard usage, alternative text, and even forced colors or Windows High Contrast Mode. This template can be used by designers, engineers, and quality teams to ensure everyone is on the same page for accessibility.   Color contrast automated checking tools Ensuring appropriate contrast for your text and informational graphics is a fundamental requirement for accessible design. There are many online tools and plug-ins for testing and finding accessible color combinations. Here are some of our favorites: aremycolorsaccessible.com colorsafe.co WebAIM Contrast Checker Contrast plugin for Figma   Development Tools Accessibility automated evaluative tools Test automation tools can help identify potential accessibility issues in your content and to give you quick insight as to what changes you might need to make. These tools typically can find some of your accessibility defects (but not all). Here are some of our favorites: Axe DevTools Chrome extension WAVE browser extension Accessibility Insights Evinced ANDI   Base components via Next Experience Components The ServiceNow Next Experience Component Reference is an amazing resource to learn about our components, their UI Builder configurations, Accessibility API properties, and usage guidelines. You can also configure our components live in the Component Playground. For highly customized components outside of this, you can use W3C’s ARIA authoring practices guide to help assist you.     Learning Resources Community articles Read more about some best practices and guidance for targeted ServiceNow products Service Portal: design guidelines Service Portal: best practices Knowledge: guide for writing accessible articles   Product Accessibility Conformance Reports  Learn about how ServiceNow products are meeting accessibility standards, such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). These reports are available for the currently supported ServiceNow releases. View the accessibility conformance reports here.   ServiceNow’s Accessibility statement Learn more about ServiceNow and its accessibility commitment.     More opportunities Join the Accessibility Product Advisory Council (PAC) This PAC is an annual program for a group of customer representatives selected to participate in a product-specific advisory board based on extensive accessibility knowledge. This is a unique opportunity to advice and influence accessibility of ServiceNow products through quarterly collaborative events. To join, please contact Tony Morales (tony.morales@servicenow.com)     Have accessibility questions? Contact accessibility_support@servicenow.com

  Background ServiceNow's product design organization – known as the Experience Team (EX) – uses Figma as the primary design tool to create wireframes and prototypes of the screens that become our products with each release. To support the 500+ designers creating product-specific prototypes, the DesignOps and Design Systems teams curate libraries of components and styles that reflect our core design systems.   These libraries represent the widgets (Employee Center / Service Portal), components (UI Builder, Next Experience, Workspaces, and Classic Environment) and elements (Mobile) that make our UIs come to life.   For you, our customers and partners configuring our customizing solutions on ServiceNow, these libraries can serve as building blocks to explore ideas for your unique needs.   Within each kit are instructions on how to setup the libraries on your Figma Team or Organization plans so that colleagues across your organization can collaborate   To download the kit, visit our Figma Community profile   Our libraries provide components, styles, and templates for: Classic Environment Configurable Workspaces Employee Center Mobile Next Experience   Getting Help If you run into any issues please post a question to the UX SIG and the team will respond within 5 business days.   Legal Disclaimer Please review the attached legal disclaimer before working with the files

Introduction Most requestor experiences on ServiceNow are built on top of the Service Portal framework. This framework brings together AngularJS and Bootstrap to provide an extensible, responsive user experience. Many customers of ServiceNow choose to theme their experience to match their company’s brand. This guide will walk you through your theming options from the simple to complex.   How to approach theming If your company has established branding guidelines for web applications, there usually is a team that owns that specification. Try to partner with them to adapt the guidelines to the options the platform allows you to manipulate. Absent branding guidelines, you may be able to reference your company’s public web site or other well regarded applications and inspect the style used there.   There a few things to focus on to effectively apply your brand Primary and secondary colors - these are often used for calls to action, buttons and navigation items throughout your reference site. Spacing - does your reference site have an airy, spaced-out design or a condensed, focused layout? This may affect how you apply margins. Fonts - By default, the Employee Center portal uses the Lato font, and the stock Service Portal demo uses Source San Pro. You may choose to override this with your brand’s font. Depending on the complexity of the changes you want to make, your familiarity with CSS and SASS, and your plans to scale your use of ServiceNow, there are multiple paths to take when it comes to theming.   Branding Editor The simplest way to theme a portal is via the Branding Editor; which provides a real time preview of the impacts of your changes. You do not need any knowledge of CSS or SASS. Depending on the portal you select, a limited set of color overrides are provided. Changing these variables will only apply to the specific portal selected in the interface.   Changes made in Branding Editor appear in the “CSS variables” field on portal record in  sp_portal .   Variable Overrides The Service Portal framework uses the Bootstrap (v3.3.6) frontend toolkit as the foundational stylesheet. If you understand the basics of SASS variables, you can easily override the out of the box themes. The platform exposes the SASS variables as if you were building you are bootstrap CSS file from source. That means you can set variables overrides in the portal record. To get to the portal record. Open the Application Navigator Search for  Portals Click on the Portals menu item underneath Service Portal Open the record that correspond to the portal you are working on Create or modify the variables in the CSS Variables field   Variable Reference - This uses the LESS prefix of an  @  symbol while SASS expects a  $ Theme Records Creating a theme record and then applying it to the portal is the recommended approach for creating scaleable branding across your instance. One theme record can be applied to multiple portals, giving you a central place to make changes once and impact many experiences.   Docs: Create a Portal Theme   In the theme record you can set the SASS variables or use the CSS Includes related list to write your own CSS for the elements within the portal. For example, in a CSS include you can create a CSS selector that overrides the style for  .text-muted  with any properties you want, you are not just limited to Bootstrap’s variables.   Bootstrap CSS Helper Class Reference   More Specific Options The framework allows you to override styles at the page level, in a widget definition or an instance of a widget.     For a full breakdown of styling options reference the Docs article Service Portal styles   Fonts in Service Portal There is no one-size fits all guidance for overriding a portal’s default fonts. A lot depends on your IT infrastructure security and ability to access hosted fonts. A few options that are out there Use a CSS Include with the Source set to  URL  and paste in the link to the hosted font. Encode the font as Base64 and paste it directly into a CSS Include Attach the font files to a CSS include record and reference via  sys_attachment.do?<SYS_ID> Work with your platform owner and admin team to figure out what works for your environment.