wherever in the globe you are good morning good afternoon good evening to all of you um welcome to the impact Academy webinar today's topic is an introduction to our newest portfolio of user experience accelerators my name is Brandy will I am Senior manager of product portfolio management here at service now and I lead the teams responsible for building and launching our ux and Technical accelerators portfolio within impact so this uh is our safe slide Safe Harbor Slide the this presentation may contain forward-looking statements based upon our beliefs and assumptions and on information currently available to us um only as of the date of this presentation uh as you may know we do value our customers feedback um and we plan to incorporate and enhance our portfolio of ux accelerators with each release so some of the things that you see today uh may change going forward with each release let's see I'm having trouble moving to the next slide thank you very much uh I would just like to mention that today's session is a part of the live on service now a curated event series to connect you with service now experts and uh peers that can help you deploy your products um and Achieve faster value we hope that you can join us again at another webinar or Meetup and you can find the list of all of our upcoming schedule and events by scanning that pretty little QR code on the right hand side of your screen or using the link um that's in the chat all right just a few housekeeping items for us before we dive in um we have SE saved time at the end for your questions so please use you'll might see the Q&A um icon at the bottom of your screen please use that button to submit any of your questions to us and our team will do the best that they can to answer any of your questions as they come up uh this presentation will also be recorded and it will be shared out on the service now um Community along with a copy of our slides and as we mentioned of course we love your feedback and so we will have a survey at the end of this session uh we just encourage you to fill it out and share any information with us um that you can all right um so we I thought we would kick off um with a quick poll to see how many of you are current impact customers you should see the poll and we'll give it a little bit of time um while this poll is up I do see some hands raised and I I want to make sure that there aren't any issues or anything that we might need to address before we dive in oh okay great just didn't want to uh but if anybody does have a quick issue put it in the chat um happy to or or the Q&A happy to answer and address any questions okay I will go ahead I ended the poll I'm going to share the results um it looks like it's it's it's kind of a a split majority of are of you are impact customers which is great um you will be able to take advantage of what we're about to show you um in in this presentation as we Deep dive into these accelerators and if you're not um we're going to give you an education on some things that you can take forward into your organization and Implement and if you're not sure I feel like there's a lot of people that are not sure so I I hope we can try to help you um figure out towards the end whether or not you are or not all right believe I close the poll and now um we'll talk a little bit about impact here um so you may have heard this already ready but just as a reminder service now impact is our answer to putting you and your business at the center of service now uh impact does combine predictive software and human Ingenuity to act as your companion to your service now practice uh to get you to success as quickly as possible so if you are a impact customer you are already well aware of that and now I would love to introduce the experts on our call today we have Shri bandam and and Siana Adams and both of them are our ux user experience subject matter experts who will give you an overview on user experience and a walkthrough of each of our accelerators and how they can help uh solve some of your challenges and with that I will hand it over to S to give you an overview of ux thank you Randy hello everybody I'm one of the three founding design strategist on the uh impact ux team before we jump into talking about uh our current accelerator offerings um I wanted to take a second to talk about user experience in general uh throughout my FAL conversations with customer in the uh customers in the past I've realized that there is uh there are many open questions for what ux means uh so the first couple of slides I wanted to spend just on that now before I jump into the content of my slides I wanted to first uh hear from all of you when you hear the term user experience what comes to your mind I would love to start with a quick poll uh to get some answers here you should see uh a multi select poll on your screen we'll leave this open for 30 seconds uh but yeah please let me know what you think of when you hear the terms user experience amazing we'll give it 15 more seconds see lots of responses streaming in amazing looks like our poll responses are slowing down I'm going to end the poll for now but uh yeah as as we can all see this is a pretty even split across the different thematic areas as well and all of you are right user experience encompasses all aspects of the end users interaction with your uh company Brand Products Services uh or anything you uh interact with your end users on as you can see here there are several different areas in which user experience uh becomes relevant some of the more common ones that you know of are usability accessibility and Aesthetics but you also have some important things like efficiency learnability consistency and user satisfaction that all form important components of the user's experience uh with your company or your organization I also want to spend a little bit of time on uh helping uncover some common myths around user experience and providing a response uh to that as well so here uh the first one that I commonly hear is around user experience being associated with design or visual design only and uh yeah there is a huge component of visual design to how people perceive off of user experience but in reality ux is so much more than that it's about understanding your users understanding their preferences their key needs their pain points and so much more more uh the goal is to create not just a goodlooking interface but also an intuitive experience that your end users uh like using to put this in terms of service now imagine creating the most beautiful service portal or employee Center portal you could think of but if your end users are struggling to find things on there to search or to even uh navigate through and complete their main tasks well you've not really uh delivered a good experience for them it's beautiful but the experience is not there the second uh very common misconception is that ux and usability are the same thing now usability is a huge component of user experience uh but it's not the only one ux has uh so many different aspects to it like I uh showed you on the slide before but there are other emotional aspects of it as well like what does the user perceive of um as their interaction with your brand how uh does it uh in impact their satisfaction with the services that you provide are they enjoying interacting with you or the products that you put out all of these are critical aspects that don't commonly fall under the usability umbrella while usability focuses on how easy something is to use uh user experience in general covers a much broader spectrum of uh of the user's interaction with you the third one is around user testing uh a lot of uh people think that user Tes thing is optional especially if you run some research uh in the beginning phases of the project but this couldn't be further from the truth uh user experience uh testing is crucial because it allows us to understand real user reactions to what you've built for them uh it's a great opportunity for you to uh know how well your Solutions your websites your uh uh portals are going to work for your end users before you actually launch it or before you actually put it in front of those users uh it also gives you a really good idea of how well your products are going to perform uh before you much more broadly launch them uh the last myth is that user testing should only happen at the end of the project now some of this is driven by the assumption that you need something super tangible super clickable and very final uh to test with users but that's not true uh you could run user testing in a super iterative manner you can test with your users with something as simple as a sketch on paper or you could do something a little more higher Fidelity like wireframes or even clickable design prototypes anything that lets you put something in front of your user and get their perspectives on how well it works for them can be considered testing and it's a really good idea to test early and often so you can avoid some costly rework later now good user experience can significantly cont contribute to better outcomes for your employees and your customers and the positive uh effects of having a good experience for employees and customers is also great for the overall business um now let's take a closer look at how good ux translates to tangible successes both internally as well as externally thinking about your employees uh streamlined processes and intuitive designs really help employees work more efficiently a userfriendly interface redu uses frustration and it leads to higher uh uh engagement across different employees uh the first one productivity may be more related to people like um fulfillers or agents that are actually using your products to deliver a service to somebody else the second one this reduced frustration of using things is way better uh applied in the context of an employee who's requesting a service uh from from your portals by addressing usability issues early a lot of wework is minimized which saves time and more importantly money for your organization and all of this leads to happier employees on the external side you see that a seamless and consistent user experience builds trust and confidence in your brand satisfied customers are more likely to return which boosts repeat business and also drives Revenue growth offering a superior user experience really differentiates you from other competitors the marketplace and all of this leads to uh a positive End customer experience which then leads to good reviews grade referrals expanding the reach and influence of your brand to create a truly effective experience it's crucial that you start with the right foundation and that Foundation is data more specifically user Center data and by that I mean understanding who your users are what they need uncovering the pain points within the context of what you're designing and making uh informed decisions and not just working off of assumptions that address all of these real pain points that users have mentioned by focusing on user centered data we also ensure that Solutions are designed with them in mind and not from uh not from again assumptions impact empowers you to achieve all of this with our ux accelerator portfolio that uh we are going to talk about in a in a quick second here so I wanted to spend another quick second in uh highlighting some key features of user experience accelerators uh first off these are the newest additions to the impact portfolio of accelerators uh they're specifically designed with customers most frequent implementation challenges in mind we've heard customers mentioned that they have service now expertise in house or uh design expertise in house but not both what makes these ux accelerators really powerful is the combination of service now and ux expertise that's behind them bringing uh both these uh important Niche expertise into understanding customers in the various stages of the implementation journey is what we excel at uh think of us as advisory Consultants with a niche set of skills we augment existing impact teams and then we really see custom customer implementation problems from a user experience lens uh by doing so we're able to better provide tools resources and expert guidance to help unblock you from all of your very specific ux roadblocks uh every accelerator is grounded in user centered design principles this means that our engagements ensure that we are prioritizing the needs behavior and experience of your end users uh We've crafted all the these engagements to deliver quick targeted solutions that drive meaningful results uh currently these are available for impact Advanced and impact total customers and um because this is the first time we've launched these accelerators we are committed to continuous Improvement by actively listening to our customers uh coming out of all the engagements that we have with them and as we grow and evolve we uh consider all aspects of the user experience that I laid out earlier accessibility usability um Aesthetics and so much more and we want to ensure that the solutions we provide through our accelerators are comprehensive and effective and targeted to what our customers are asking for all righty now to introduce the uh accelerator portfolio for our initial Ru out we've launched three accelerators that are focused on these biggest challenges that I mentioned customers asking us about first we have ux design this accelerator is designed to provide tailored uh design enablement resources UI inspiration and support uh for your design and implementation teams uh around employee center it's all about equipping your teams with the right tools and guidance to create a user centered uh employee Center second we have ux review which focuses on identifying opportunities uh to enhance the overall design and functionality of your portals specifically employee Center in the case finally our most recent accelerator launch is the ux taxonomy review and design which uh is all about how we can optimize how users find and access your catalog items and knowledge articles it has a lot more to do with information architecture and taxonomy of your employee Center portal right now to contextualize when these accelerators are most relevant for you I wanted to very quickly share this uh now create uh implementation framework some of you that have access to impact or have engaged with the implementation process are probably familiar with it for those of you on the call here that are not I'll leave a link uh that explains this approach to implementing service now in more detail this is called the now create unified framework and it has several different stages uh that are very very typical across all of the customers that we've uh researched for the three accelerators we currently have we've split them up into pre-implementation and POS implementation you can see here uh ux design uh that uh is important around uh uncovering the right tools and support for you is a really good fit for the planning phases where you're trying to figure out how to best uh create a plan for your employee Center implementation once you've launched your uh portal your employee Center portal ux review and ux taxonomy review and design are really accelerators that help you understand um how your portal is working and Siana is going to talk about this in much more detail in a couple of slides but we made these accelerators a little flexible so in case um there are specific needs in other phases we can uh customers can request these as well so you have uh for example in the initiate phase ux design can be requested as well or let's say pre-launch you want to understand from a service ux expert how well your portals are performing you could always request the ux review and taxonomy as well review and design as well there is a lot more guidance around what these accelerators are in our uh service now documentation site but Siana like I mentioned is going to provide an excellent overview of uh that in a second so Siana turning it over to you now thank you s appreciate it so yeah I'm really excited to share with you some of the details of our U accelerators today um the first one that we're going to be talking about is that um ux design accelerator so our ux design employee Center accelerator um is really designed to be tailored ux um advisory support so the purpose of the accelerator is really to provide our customers with um you know a tailored ux advisory and um educate and assist you on all things ux in the context of service now's employee Center so you know this could mean a variety of things whether that's providing design inspiration for your mockups providing ux enablement resources for your ux or development teams or offering leading practice recommendations and support our ux experts here will work with you and understand where you are in your implementation journey and determine the best path for you in order to meet your ux goals so the type of customer who's really going to be a good fit for this accelerator so um the ideal customer has not yet implemented their employee Center so this one really is you know you're in the design and planning stages of your EC implementation um and three touched on this earlier but we really stressed the value of design before development as we've seen and found time and time again that this can save lots of time and money and rework down the road um so uh the other thing that really helps you be successful with this accelerator is uh customers who first complete or jump start your employee Center accelerator uh this is just another accelerator that's available in our catalog but what's great about that one is it provides that Foundation technical knowledge around employee Center um and through that you gain this Tech deeper technical understanding of EC and its capabilities and so that you know by the time that you come and request the ux design accelerator you have a better understanding of what the portal uh is capable of and how some of the outof boox features can meet your the needs of your users before having to you know think about maybe custom Solutions and uh things like that um additionally the more the most successful customers out of this accelerator are the ones who are open to learning about ux principles and how they apply in the context of service now um so these are customers who really understand the value of prioritizing users when it comes to design and you know you're eager and open to learning more about these uh design principles why they're important and the value of it is understood there as well um so uh we'll talk about this in the next slide but the customers who have already maybe Gone live with their employees Center who are hearing this um there is an accelerator for you as well so so don't worry there um and that's the ux review accelerator so we'll get into that a bit in the next slide so the purpose of you know the the best time to really request this accelerator it could be for you know again a variety of different reasons um so maybe it's that you know your organization might be lacking an understanding around the value of ux and you just really want to learn more about these fundamentals of ux again in the context of service now um maybe you're facing challenges in creating a design or solidifying an implementation uh for the design so M so this could be you need questions answered like um okay we have this ux researcher ux designer they're coming up with the mockups but how how does this really tie into our overall software development life cycle how can we be agile for example while incorporating ux so things like that um process oriented questions as well um you know just another example it could be your your organization could be struggling with alignment so whether it's stakeholder alignment or maybe facing challenges striking that balance between you know your over for your your business goals of your organization and the actual needs of your users sometimes you know we find that there might be a disconnect between the design teams and Engineers or the ux researchers and other stakeholders so we can assist in providing recommendations to help find the solutions to those problems and insist with that stakeholder alignment piece as well um and then lastly this acceler is a really great opportunity to just receive access to guidance on service now's designed resources a figma asset library and exclusive design to service now ux expertise as well um so all that said this is not uh if your organization is looking for you know full service in to end ux design you know for the fullblown cycle start to finish post iteration this is not um this accelerator won't meet those needs um and another thing that's not covered or in scope for this accelerator is um wireframe or High Fidelity designs so um moving on to our next uh accelerator this is going to be our ux review employee Center accelerator so um the purpose of this accelerator is really to conduct a thorough evaluation of your portal portal and provide recommendations based on our service now leading practices so this is more of a usability uh review um just bringing in our expertise and analyzing your portal so ideal customers for this accelerator um you know unlike the first one we talked about this accelerator should be requested after your employee Center implementation so um you know the best fit the customers who will fit this best or customers who've already launched an employee Center or have an employee Center portal potentially built out maybe in a subr environment that's ready to be reviewed um and really you really just maybe want an understanding of uh service now design fundament uh fundamentals and things like that so uh when customers request this accelerator um it could be that you've launched your employee center it's been maybe live for six months a year and it's just not um you know producing the results that you thought it was or maybe your user adoption just isn't as high as you expected it to be so you just want someone to come in and maybe help investigate why that might be uh this would be a great opportunity um in this accelerator to do that another example could be you just want an expert um opinion on the portal um it could be we've had customers you know come in and we' reviewed their portal and it's great um and there may be little tweaks or recommendations we can make here and there but sometimes it is nice to have that expert opinion and that validation in a second set of eyes if you will um this accelerator is really great for organizations maybe where maybe you've heard your users express some sort of dissatisfaction with the portal experience or frustration uh with the overall experience and the request process um you they've expressed their usability issues maybe the overall design is overwhelming or just general effectiveness of the portal might be lacking um so this would be a great accelerator to we we those are all things that we can kind of help investigate as part of this accelerator um and it could be that you just um you just want to help you know structure a way to drive your requirements for um future enhancements of your portal so maybe you're lacking those actionable insights for improving the overall current experience um you know kind of three kind of t on this earlier but you know ux is meant to be iterative it's incremental Improvement so it's it's that you're going to want to continuously improve over time and we always recommend prioritizing users and their needs and their feedback when thinking about um act uh you know driving enhancements for your portal um or you know those are all you know Prime examples of good times to request this accelerator and lastly it could just be that um you know the the design is failing your users um maybe you did do a custom design or you pulled in um resources and built out this the solution uh but for some reason maybe along the way users weren't brought into the process and maybe there was U you know you no usability studies beforehand or just no validation with users before you went live with that design um and then you're finding that it's actually not addressing a lot of your critical user needs so similarly similar to the first accelerator um this is not really going to be a good fit for customers who need that comprehensive endtoend ux support so that's not something we can really provide as part of this impact um so you know if you want someone fully onboarding onboarded from the beginning of the project all the way through um again this won't meet those needs um however we do have partner resources as well as our expert Services here at service now who provide um in to-end res uh Services as well um and then again this is not something you know um where we could follow up on those actions um we leave it off at kind of the recommendations it's it's an advisory only model so um we won't be able to actually you know fix you know the um recommendations that we offer to you in the system um there's no Hands-On keyboard there um again and then I touched on this earlier but uh not a good fit for um you know customers where your portal is not you know um and still in the early stages of development okay so moving on to our third um you know accelerator here this is our uh ux taxonomy review and design so this is an area that can be a paino for many of our customers um the purpose of this is really to provide guidance for optimizing your portal navigation for users so you know the customers who are going to want to accept this are customers who want to optimize your overall content structure and navigation so so you'll hear a lot of these terms used interchangeably but they're really kind of all talking about the same thing so maybe you'll hear your content structure your your overall navigation your taxonomy your mega menu and you might hear the term information architecture really it's just the overall um content and navigation structure of your portal that that your users you know click through to navigate and find content that they're looking for so the goal of this is really to help improve usability for your users if you find that your um your information architecture is lacking there um and really customers who might just need support building or refining and existing information architecture using our leading practices so maybe you have an information architecture that's already built out and you kind of just want a validation of that so we can teach methods and talk through things like tree testing studies um and you know teach you how you can continue to validate and improve on your information architecture so a good tender request as accelerator is um if you have heard users of your portal voice concerns around overall content discoverability meaning oh I come into the portal and I'm looking for this and I just can't find it um causing frustration or just overall issues with navigating the portal um that's going to be kind of a red flag where you might think oh this would be a great um time to request the ux taxonomy accelerator um maybe your portal has just become difficult to navigate over time so uh customers maybe who moved from our service portal to uh employee Center and didn't really you know um do a full content revamp maybe the content just become overgrown and it's just turned into this Beast with um you know lots of topics and content over time or outdated structures or services that have been retired and just you know there was just no upkeep there um and then uh lastly if you just want to learn more about employee Center taxonomy features and things like our Advanced portal navigation and just options for really improving that taxonomy that's perfectly fine too um you you're you know you're welcome to request this accelerator and we'll work with you there to to meet your needs um and you're seeing a probably a patter here again when it's not a good fit is if you need a comprehensive endtoend taxonomy study so you know something that we can't do as part of this is you know for example a full-blown card sort study which is um essentially when you design your information architecture entirely from scratch if you need a whole content strategy session this is when I would definitely recommend that you bring in um full-time ux Specialists and also you can you know of course request these accelerators and we can provide our expertise um along the way and then if the needs of your organization extend just beyond that taxonomy and require broader ux support that's when you may want to consider Partners or some of our expert service of resources as well so those were kind of it's kind of a quick overview of our three um accelerators that we're offering today and now we'll just quickly talk about kind of what these look like so for all of our accelerators we follow the same uh similar process um so for the first first meeting we're really just going to be it's going to be that initial Discovery call so this is when we're kick off the process um we'll meet with the stakeholders and gather that essential information up front um this is really where we're going to want to set expectations and align on goals so we want to hear your business goals and the goals for your users and we'll work with you um and collect all of that information and we also want to set expectations our goal out of these um they are short they're short and sweet um but they're very impactful so our real goal at the end of this is to make sure that we feel like you've really gotten something out of this and that you walk away feeling like you've got value out of um requesting this accelerator so really setting those expectations up front so there's no surprises and everyone's on the same page and then the next step is really going to be that assessment so this is when our ux Consultants will go back we get access to your environment um and we do our own kind of review or you know just assessment of the situation we'll evaluate the current state um trying to understand the biggest pain points and look out for usability issues this is really we're going to where we're going to uncover any key challenges as well as identifying areas of improvement this is where we're going to be looking out for oh you know your information architecture has you know 500 topics for example and that's just not you know that violates best practices so things like that um and then from there we'll move into our ux activities so not all ux methods or ux activities work or are necessary for every customer situation so this is you know the discretion of the ux consultant to to look at the situation and say you know I think we should do this activity um so that's kind of that tailored approach that we were talking about where you know we we pivot based on the needs of the the customer that we're working with um so this is going to be the recommendation by the ux uh consultant based on that evaluation that they that they did um and then from there we go into our um next phase and I'm having trouble moving the slide which is our recommendations Workshop so um during this uh Workshop it's really just a collaborative um call where we review all of our findings and insights um we discuss recommendations at that point so we just want to make sure you leave off there with some quick wins as well as long-term goals that we suggest that you work towards as well all in the name of improving the overall user experience of your portal and then lastly what we're going to do is is hand those off to you we're going to package everything up all of our findings and our deliverables in a in a bow and we'll hand those over to you so that you can obviously continue to reference those as you move forward on your implementation journey we'll provide you with next steps so you know you know we're not just going to leave you hanging there we'll say you know this is what we recommend you do after this um as well as recommend other accelerators that we offer in our catalog as well depending on again your situation so those are kind of the core um process steps is part of the um all of our ux accelerators that we're currently offering um and so yeah really exciting stuff um and now I'm going to hand it actually back over to Brandy who's going to talk a little bit about how to request these accelerators if you're interested great thank you Siana oh I see I am also having a challenge thank you very much uh so if you are an impact customer today as it it looked like a good uh handful of you are um this is the impact accelerator catalog which you are probably familiar with you will just log into your um service now impact instance you will go to this top navigation bar where it says initiatives and accelerators underneath there you will see accelerator catalog as an option and then depending on your different uh package level you will see these different um accelerators or I'm sorry cataloges with the accelerators listed underneath so I've shown the architecture catalog here with our three user experience accelerators and you would just go in there and click them to request um there's also a link in this slide with a guide on how to request these accelerators and then we also have some resources for you so if you are not an impact customer or if you are an impact customer these resources are going to be extremely helpful for you um we have a whole bunch of different uh links here that go to a bunch of our different uh areas within service now where we have content so um please I encourage you to check that out um once you know these slides and everything is available and then we also have um so if you are not an impact customer but are curious on what it is there's a link here to learn uh more about impact that link will also take you to the impact Community where these this presentation and the slides will be posted as as soon as they're available we also have uh training and certification um information there if you want there's a link for that and then our expert services that we talked about there is a link to find out more