Delivering Amazing Experiences
Summary
ServiceNow builds enterprise products that help companies and their end-users work smarter, faster, and easier. As a team, we strive to create product experiences that people love and make work, work better for people. In this presentation, George and Joy, designers at ServiceNow, will explore what it means to deliver amazing experiences throughout the design process focusing on our end-users. We will share a case study that empowers designers on building great, sustainable products that are user friendly, visually beautiful, empowering and super charge productivity.
Key Insights
-
•
COVID-19 accelerated ServiceNow's development cycle from the usual six months to a biweekly release cadence for return-to-office applications.
-
•
ServiceNow's return-to-work product integrates with partners like Microsoft for contact tracing and Uber for essential worker transportation.
-
•
Employee sentiment surveys are embedded to ensure companies respect readiness and comfort levels when returning to the office.
-
•
Facility management features include PPE ordering and desk cleaning scheduling linked to actual occupied workspace data.
-
•
ServiceNow's Atomic Design-based system organizes UI components into four hierarchical layers: base components, experience components, page templates, and core experiences.
-
•
The drag-and-drop UI builder enables designers to create and tweak interfaces themselves, conserving engineering bandwidth for backend work.
-
•
Designers collaborated remotely across multiple time zones using tools like Miro and Figma, enabling rapid, creative iteration during the pandemic.
-
•
The demo for a fictitious apartment rental platform was built in two weeks, including front-end design, backend data integration, and realistic content like federal housing links.
-
•
ServiceNow employs its own products internally before public release, facilitating immediate feedback and early problem detection.
-
•
Their publicly available design system on developer.servicenow.com provides reusable components and usage guidelines to reduce reinventing the wheel for customers.
Notable Quotes
"We ramped up from six-month release cycles to releasing every two weeks to keep ahead and still deliver experiences that wow."
"We met with local health officials, governments, and partner health companies to define best practices for returning to office safely."
"Employees can self-report COVID-19 status, get temperature checks, and request rideshares like Uber all within one workflow."
"We organized UI components hierarchically so designers focus on solving user needs rather than building basic elements."
"The drag-and-drop UI builder frees engineers to focus on backend data integration while designers create and tweak layouts."
"We use realistic demo content, like equal housing opportunity links, so demos feel relevant and authentic."
"We’re drinking our own champagne—using our products internally months before release to stress test and improve them."
"Collaboration during COVID was successful using tools like Miro to do remote whiteboarding and brainstorming across time zones."
"Designers connected with engineers closely, sometimes building templates themselves to quickly validate visions."
"Our design system and components are public on developer.servicenow.com to encourage customer reuse and consistency."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Without these rules and conventions, we wouldn’t be able to improvise."
Jim KalbachJazz Improvisation as a Model for Team Collaboration
November 6, 2017
"You want someone who writes with equal parts empathy and authority, not just pure authority."
Louis RosenfeldCoffee with Lou: Should You Write a (UX) Book?
March 7, 2024
"I kind of think of it one as like fields of influence — staff influences the team or pillar, principal influences organization-wide."
Catt Small Micah Bennett Brian Carr Jessica HarlleeWhat's Next for ICs: Exploring Staff and Principal Designer Roles
February 22, 2024
"You might find that spending the most time getting people interested in collaboration is where the work really happens."
Marieke McCloskeyUser Science: Product Analytics & User Research
March 11, 2021
"Ultimately, AI avatar tools offer UX teams options to keep recordings while meeting legal compliance."
Llewyn Paine[Demo] Deploying AI doppelgangers to de-identify user research recordings
June 5, 2024
"You don’t want to overdesign just to make something more data interpretable because that can lead you down a dark path."
Joshua NobleCasual Inference
October 6, 2023
"Empathy doesn’t come from reading a report—you don’t get close to users by just reading data."
Sara LogelYour Colleagues are Your Users Too
March 29, 2023
"We made a very intentional choice to build in five minute breaks after every talk based on feedback and experience."
Bria Alexander Louis RosenfeldWelcome
January 8, 2024
"Accessibility isn’t a checkbox you run automated tests for; you must involve people with disabilities to benchmark success."
Sam ProulxOnline Shopping: Designing an Accessible Experience
June 7, 2023