User Experience (UX) Designer

 

User Experience (UX) Designer

Certification - User Experience Designer

https://trailhead.salesforce.com/users/strailhead/trailmixes/prepare-for-your-ux-designer-credential

Prepare for your UX Designer Credential Trailmix | Salesforce Trailhead

https://medium.com/salesforce-ux
https://www.usability.gov/
https://www.interaction-design.org/
https://www.lightningdesignsystem.com/
https://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20

 

Discovery

Exam Weight: 13%

User Adoption Metrics

adoption dashboards based on the pattern of usage
Salesforce Surveys
Chatter polls

User Story Creation

1. Who: From whose perspective (aka user persona) within Salesforce will this user story be written?
2. What: What goal will be accomplished or implemented within the Salesforce org as the result of the user story?
3. Why: Why does the user need the Salesforce functionality or feature outlined in the user story?

As a < who >, I want < what > so that < why >.

• Clarifying the scope for the project team
• Assisting the development/implementation team
• Ensuring testers know what should be tested

Acceptance criteria should state intent, but not a solution.
Acceptance criteria can also be formatted as if/then statements.
The project team didn’t engage in story writing.

• Result: The user story will not represent the multiple perspectives of the project team. Extensive rewrites of the user story is inevitable.
• How to avoid: Schedule a story-writing session at the beginning of the project. Continuously review and discuss the user story with project team members.

The who of the user story is an undefined user.

• Result: Development team will struggle to understand the role of this user’s motivations and needs, as it is undefined. User story will not produce the intended result.
• How to avoid: Before creating a user story, create a list of personas of defined users. These well-defined personas can then be referenced when creating a user story, developing/implementing the solution(s), and testing.

The why in the user story is feature specific.

• Result: The user story is overly technical and focused on specifics, reading more like a description of the tool than a story. User needs are not addressed.
• How to avoid: Keep the user’s needs priority number one. Review the user story after it’s written to see if it focused too much on specifics. Always welcome feedback from the project team.

The acceptance criteria is too vague.

• Result: Without specific testable acceptance criteria, there’s no reliable way to measure when the user story is successfully completed.
• How to avoid: Ensure all acceptance criteria are independent and can be answered with true or false. Work with the project team to write acceptance criteria that aligns with the goal of the user.

The user story was assigned to the implementation team without a team discussion.

• Result: Likelihood of user stories being misinterpreted during development is greatly increased. End product may be far from what was intended.
• How to avoid: Review stories with your team when assigning them. Review details, highlight intention, and ensure the team is on the same page.

Innovation Customer Discovery

• Embodying
• Shadowing
• Interviewing

An archetype in innovation represents a market segment and amplifies a specific behavioral quality.
A futurecast is a mash-up of trends, phenomena, and predictions that create a compelling argument or case for change.

The difference between an MVP and an MLP is that with the MLP you focus on the minimum number of features needed to maximize love from a small population of core, ardent users

UX Research

• Project scope (includes the problem you’re studying and any results of prior related research)
• Project timeline
• Participant recruitment list
• Project research methods

 

• Behavioral methods focus on what people do.
• Attitudinal methods focus on what people say.
• Qualitative methods try to answer “Why?” or “How?”
• Quantitative methods try to answer “How much?” or “How many?”

 

• Surveys are good for casting a wide net to collect many responses.
• Card sorting activities are good for grouping things into categories, for example, items in a navigation menu.
• Contextual inquiry is good for observing a participant in their own environment to better understand how they work.
• Individual interviews are good for getting detailed information from a user and spending one-on-one time getting to know them or how they use your product or service.
• Focus groups are good for observing how participants respond to your questions in a group setting, noting similarities and differences to how they work or use your product or service.
• Usability testing is good for learning how your users experience your service or product by measuring tasks and performance.

Bias-busting tips:

• Stay away from leading questions
• Ask open questions
• Ask what your users are thinking rather than what they’re feeling

Thorny Hawthorne Effect

behavior might not be the same as if you were not being observed

Process Mapping

Process mapping creates visual representations of business processes
Capability Model
Capability models or industry blueprints list out the high level process areas
Detailed Process Map
A detailed process map is a flowchart that shows a drill-down version of a process that contains all the details of each step of the process and any subsequent steps along the way.
SIPOC
A SIPOC map shows the key elements of a process such as Suppliers, Inputs, Process, Outputs, and Customers.
Value Stream Map
A value stream map is used to visualize the flow of material and information that is needed to bring a product to the customer.

UX Personas

a persona represents a group of users clustered based on shared behavior, motivations, goals, pain points, or other characteristics

Sales Cloud Personas

Sales Leader

• Viewing and creating reports and dashboards
• Customizing and administering Salesforce
• Collaborating with colleagues

Deal Closer

• Logging activities (including calls, emails, and notes)
• Updating existing prospects and customers
• Entering new prospects and customers
• Reviewing and working through their list of leads or opportunities

Data Expert

• Viewing or creating reports and dashboards
• Customizing and administering Salesforce

Pipeline Builder

• Entering new prospects and customers
• Updating existing prospects and customers
• Logging activities (calls, emails, notes)

Trusted Advisor

• Updating existing prospects and customers
• Logging activities (calls, emails, notes)
• Entering new prospects and customers

Service Cloud Personas

Case Solver

• Logging activities
• Troubleshooting customer issues
• Updating existing customers
• Viewing the status of cases
• Collaborating with colleagues to solve cases

Expert Agent

• Troubleshooting customer issues
• Viewing the status of cases
• Logging activities
• Collaborating with colleagues to solve cases
• Creating support cases

Team Leader

• Viewing the status of specific cases
• Creating and viewing reports and dashboards
• Collaborating with colleagues to solve cases
• Troubleshooting customer issues
• Changing ownership of a case to a supervisor or another agent

Service Admin

• Customizing and administering Salesforce
• Creating and viewing reports and dashboards
• Creating users and accounts
• Viewing the status of specific cases
• Troubleshooting customer issues

Marketing Cloud Personas

Marketing Manager

• Coordinating cross-channel messaging, cadence, and customer journeys
• Approving content
• Analyzing campaign metrics

Strategic Leader

• Reviewing dashboards to understand customer engagement and ROI
• Approving content for major campaigns

Marketing Specialist

• Executing on the marketing plan
• Developing, scheduling, and sending marketing communications
• Analyzing data to drive decisions
• Monitoring campaigns

Designer-Developer

• Designing marketing assets
• Coding and testing emails
• Coordinating approvals across current marketing assets

IT Services

• Managing infrastructure for the organization
• Creating APIs for data for the Marketing Cloud
• Debugging automations and journeys

Experience Cloud Personas

Site User

• Browsing and reading feeds
• Interacting with content
• Collaborating with colleagues

Community Manager

• Moderating forums
• Running reports on health
• Communicating with members

Site Admin

• Controlling and defining the sitemap
• Defining permissions and access
• Controlling information architecture

Site Builder

• Building components and templates
• Customizing page layouts
• Modifying the community’s appearance

UX Fundamentals

Exam Weight: 16%

Build Your Storyboard

Step One: Whiteboard It
Step Two: Map It
Step Three: Slide Your Story into Google Slides
Step Four: Build with Confidence

Start with Research

Eliminate Guesswork

Get to Know Quantitative Data

quantitative data. These are things that can be measured, like behavior patterns and statistics or trends.

Get to Know Qualitative Data

Qualitative data answers “why”—why does the user like this specific feature, why does this process cause frustration, and so on.

Work with a Design System

A design system is a place where you can store reusable components (like buttons, screen animations, branding, and so forth), style guides, code snippets, and more. Design systems:

prototype

• A low-fidelity prototype is typically a wireframe sketched on paper or a whiteboard.
• A mid-fidelity prototype is also a wireframe, but produced on screen using a wireframing tool. It can contain some design elements, like images and words, but it’s still largely focused on an app or page layout, rather than function.
• A high-fidelity prototype is an interactive mockup, often built closer to what the actual app will look and act like in real life.

Web Accessibility

Color as Meaning

avoid using color alone to present information or to request an action.

Color Contrast

design with color is the contrast between text color and the background upon which the text is displayed

Text on Top of Non-Solid Backgrounds

• Only heading text may appear on non-solid backgrounds. Text should be at least 18 px and ideally only one line; longer strings of text can be harder to navigate when the background varies slightly behind each word or line.
• Gradient backgrounds can only be vertical (the color at the top is different than the color at the bottom). Avoid horizontal, diagonal, and radial gradients, which have the potential to change the background color for each character in a string.
• Always define a backup background color. Some users turn off background images due to accessibility concerns, so make sure that with the background image disabled, text is still legible and passes contrast requirements (4.5:1).

Improve User Experience with Animations

• Flashing or blinking. From WCAG 2.3.2 Three Flashes, avoid any animations that flash or blink more than 3 times per second. Otherwise, rapidly blinking animations can cause seizures in some of your users.
• Longer than 5 seconds. From WCAG 2.2.2 Pause, Stop, Hide, any animations that last longer, or repeat for longer than 5 seconds must include a way to pause or stop the animation.

• Article: WCAG 2.4.7 Focus Visible
• Article: Give Your Site Some Focus! Tips for Designing Useful and Usable Focus Indicators
• Article: Webaim Creating Accessible Forms

Human Centered Design

Exam Weight: 12%

• Discover: Problem is presented
• Define: Storyboarding, use cases, feature creation
• Design: Sketching
• Refine: User testing
• Deliver: Presentations and photos

HCD has been geared toward finding solutions that are desirable, feasible, and viable.

• When a solution is desirable, that means people actually need it.
• When a solution is feasible, that means you can actually build it.
• When a solution is viable, that means it fits your organization’s business model.

 

• User experience (UX) design—The creation of meaningful and relevant experiences for users.
• Service design—The creation of consistent user or customer experiences across multiple interactions.

Relationship design is the creation of experiences that foster ongoing engagement and strengthen connections between people, companies, and communities over time.

UX design focuses on:

• How easy it is for someone to use a product.
• How quickly someone can complete tasks using a product.
• How much someone enjoys interacting with a product.

Service design focuses on:

• How easily someone can accomplish their goals during an interaction, whether online or in person.
• How consistent the brand experience is for customers across distinct interactions—whether they’re online, in an app, on different devices, or in person.
• How organizations are set up to deliver great experiences to customers.

When designing for relationships, keep the following goals in mind.

• Engagement—How products, experiences, and services encourage ongoing engagement with brands.
• Connection—How products, experiences, and services support individuals, communities, and brands connecting with each other.
• Social values—How products, experiences, and services impact all people (including non-customers and non-users), as well as the planet.

When using design to strengthen customer relationships:

• Remember that users and customers are human beings (not numbers or data or dollars).
• Prioritize in-depth, design-led research to understand what customers need, the messages they want to hear, and the challenges they face.
• Create forums for users and customers to provide feedback and suggestions—then actively incorporate their feedback and create participation tools to collaborate with them.

When using design to strengthen employee relationships:

• Increase collaboration across teams and departments by holding workshops with employees from different parts of the organization—so that diverse perspectives solve problems together.
• Do research and use design tools (such as Journey Mapping) to better understand the employee journey and identify ways it can be improved.
• Create a safe environment for creative risk-taking by building a culture of critique. Encourage team members to share incomplete work, and practice giving and receiving constructive feedback with compassion.

When designing to strengthen community relationships:

• Prioritize diversity and inclusion on every team. We all have biases based on our limited experience, but varied life experiences and perspectives make it easier to spot issues and opportunities.
• Introduce friction into the design process. Take time to question the potential consequences of design and business choices on communities—beyond users and customers.
• Value the knowledge of community members, activists, and change-makers. Seek opportunities to partner with people and organizations outside of the company. Embrace coalition models and collaborative problem-solving.

mindsets of relationship design: compassion, courage, intention, and reciprocity.

• Compassion mindset—to lead with strengthening connection
• Courage mindset—to push ourselves to be vulnerable
• Intention mindset—to engage with clear purpose
• Reciprocity mindset—to exchange value in service of longevity

By using the mindsets of relationship design, we:

• Open ourselves to value exchange and better connections across our ecosystem.
• Activate the potential of relationships to make our business stronger.
• Strive for positive impact on people and the planet.

eight major risk zones that technology companies should be mindful of when developing their products.

1. Truth, Disinformation, Propaganda
2. Addiction & the Dopamine Economy
3. Economic & Asset Inequalities
4. Machine Ethics & Algorithmic Biases
5. Surveillance State
6. Data Control & Monetization
7. Implicit Trust & User Understanding
8. Hateful & Criminal Actors

Unintended Consequence Scanning often fall under six main categories, which Consequence Scanning helps mitigate.

1. Imbalance in the Benefits of Technology
2. Unforeseen Issues
3. Erosion of Trust
4. Impact on the Environment
5. Changes in Norms and Behaviors
6. Displacement and Societal Shifts

In a Consequence Scanning event you will answer the following three questions about your product:

1. What are the intended and unintended consequences of this product or feature?
2. What are the positive consequences we want to focus on?
3. What are the consequences we want to mitigate?

Here’s a timeline of the basic conversation design (CxD) process.
Discover: Gather requirements from stakeholders, conduct relevant research.
Ideate: Create a document that lays out what your conversation aims to accomplish, and how you want it to look/feel/sound like for your users.
Prototype: Produce the information architecture (IA) in a flowchart showing how dialogs fit together, what menus will look like, and what voice and tone you’re going for. Craft the discourse and copy for what the bot will actually say to users in text, then assemble in a prototyping tool or environment.
Revise: Conduct usability testing, review with stakeholders for final approvals, conduct QA in final build.

Inclusive Design

• Recognize exclusion. When we solve problems using our own biases, exclusion happens. We need to recognize exclusion before we can address it.
• Learn from diversity. Human beings are the real experts in adapting to diversity.
• Solve for one, extend to many. Focus on what’s universally important to all humans.

There are five interrelated elements to the cycle of exclusion.

• Why we make: The motivations of the problem solver.
• Who makes it: The problem solver.
• How we make: The methods and resources the problem solver uses.
• Who uses it: The assumptions the problem solver makes about the people who use the solution.
• What we make: The solution or product that the problem solver creates.

• Make promises you can keep. Be real about the state of inclusion and address any fundamental access issues before proceeding.
• Set the expectation that inclusion is a long game. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again. There are many exclusion habits to break and that doesn’t happen overnight. Inclusive design is a process and a daily practice.
• Reward inclusion. Prioritize and reward the habits and decision-making that make inclusion a part of the process from the start, and that’s what people will do.
• Bring people along in the process. Create different ways for people to participate in this process of shifting to inclusion and practicing inclusion. It will help strengthen relationships, uplift excluded communities, and develop a shared sense of belonging.

 

Declarative Design

Exam Weight: 27%

Testing

Exam Weight: 11%

In App Feedback

User Initiated Mechanisms: These mechanisms persist in the experience, allowing a user to provide feedback at any time through an easy access point. These feedback mechanisms allow you to meet the user where they are on their digital journey to capture a moment to moment reaction. These mechanisms are less interruptive for users than system initiated mechanisms.
System Initiated Mechanisms: Feedback mechanisms initiated by the system are generally reserved for high business impact research questions as they are more interruptive for users. System initiated mechanisms can leverage data to segment the user base and hear from specific audiences. These mechanisms generally do not persist in the experience. Once triggered, a user has the opportunity to provide feedback or may ignore or close the mechanism.

Inline

It’s displayed inline and doesn’t block any other part of the interface, or disrupt a user’s task flow.

Docked Composer and Half Sheet

It allows us to gather feedback from users without disrupting them continually using the app to complete tasks. A docked composer could surface the same survey across multiple pages.

Popover

A popover contains a simple survey that usually does not require multiple steps/pages.

Full Page

Usually this is for questions that will require taking the user's attention away from their current tasks.

Modal

A modal is used when a survey needs to be shown without the user losing the page context, and allows them to easily return to the underlying page after the form is submitted or dismissed

Salesforce Lightning Design System (SLDS)

Exam Weight: 21%

Empty State

Each empty state must have a message. A call to action and illustration are optional.

Localization

Be Aware of the Cultural Significance of Colors

Avoid Using Flags to Represent Languages

When designing a language selector, use plain text despite its lack of visual appeal. Only use flags to represent countries, not languages.

Messaging

How is voice different from tone?
● Voice reflects our personality. It’s what we say.
● Tone is the way we speak. It’s how we say things.

User Engagement

• Welcome Mat: Link to walkthroughs, videos, or Trailhead to guide users through more complex concepts or tasks.
• Setup Assistant: Link to walkthroughs or concept help topics to explain why something is configured in a certain way.
• Feature Popover and Docked Assistant: Link to help topics to provide more detailed explanation about the purpose and benefits of the feature you're calling users' attention to.
• Error Message and Empty State: Link to help topics containing more information about the issue the user's running into and what can be done to resolve or work around it.