September 21, 2011

Usability and Salesforce Dallas User Group

Shell Black Principal ShellBlack.com, LLC @Shell_Black Certified & Registered Partner 7 years exp. with Salesforce.com

Matthew Lamb Consultant at Appirio Salesforce MVP @SFDCMatt 6 years at Usability Sciences 5 years exp. with Salesforce.com

Agenda

•  What is Usability?

•  What is Usability Testing?

•  Configuring Salesforce for Usability

•  Usability Testing Boot Camp

•  Q & A

What is Usability? What is Usability Testing?

A little usability humor…

At a high level, usability:

§  Is whether or not a product can be easily and effectively understood and used by the people who it is designed for

§  Bridges the gap between people who make technology and people who actually use that technology

§  Has historically run upstream against IT budgets and timelines §  Traditional waterfall development did not account for user feedback

What is usability?

A practical example… Headed to dinner later; how would you make a reservation?

A practical example… Obviously, by mousing over the middle egg on the left side. Silly user…

Usability Testing is…

•  To the end user:

•  System is easy to understand and navigate

•  Clear data entry expectations

•  Descriptive error messages drive self-resolution of issues

•  Minimized frustrations and anger toward their sys admin

Benefits of usability testing

•  To the admin / developer:

•  Increase / accelerate adoption

•  Minimize training time & effort

•  Minimize support calls / costs

•  Post-live rework is minimized

•  Happy users don’t want to tar and feather their sys admin

Configuring Salesforce For Usability

•  Salesforce has been long focused on usability

•  Hired Usability Sciences in 1998 to usability test the prototype of Salesforce.com, and stayed committed to listening to their users

•  Now have an internal team of ~25 dedicated user researchers

•  That means you, the admin, are delivering a usable system to your users!

•  Right? Maybe not…

Usability and Salesforce.com

•  Frustrated users

•  Users struggle to find records and create duplicates

•  Frequent “Click-Throughs” to find the right record

•  Too many required fields resulting in bogus data •  e.g. Email email@email.com and Phone # 555-555-5555

•  Scrolling up and down multiple times to create a new record (or worse, scrolling left and right)

•  Users don’t know the purpose of some fields – and reporting shows they are not being used

•  Search, Tab, and Lookup layouts not configured

Symptoms of Poor Usability in Salesforce

•  Less is more, reduce the noise on the page •  Don’t over engineer a simple function (if it is hard to use,

they won’t use it!) •  Provide visual clues and instruction •  Be consistent in how you present information •  Make information easy to find (reduce “Click Throughs”) •  Keep data entry to the absolute minimum •  Reduce scrolling

As a System Administrator, what can we do?

The next few slides are some Usability “quick hits,” but not an exhaustive list…

Is everything OK with this record?

Provide Visual Cues and Instruction

Image Formula Fields – great for Status & Exceptions Additional examples: •  Search Salesforce Help for:

Sample_Image_Formula_Fields_Customization_Guide.pdf •  Search AppExchange for “Graphics Pack” by Force.com Labs

Help Text – Provide Instruction to Users

Provide Visual Cues and Instruction Cont.

Pick your preference for how you organize fields, but be consistent across all objects for information in the record “Header” (top of the page)

In the Left column I prefer: •  Record Owner •  Link to Parent (e.g. Account “Parent Account” or Contact “Reports To”) •  Record Name •  Picklists that help categorize the record (e.g. Account or Opportunity “Type”

field)

On the Right column I prefer: •  Any type of Stage or Status •  Any visual clues I’ve created to communicate action needed (neglected

account, case aging, missing information, etc) •  Items that need to be maintained frequently (e.g. Close Date and Amount on

Opportunities)

Consistent Presentation– Reduce the Learning Curve

Consistent Presentation – Example: Tasks and Event Page Layouts

Notice what is in the right and left column:

Event Page Layout is the same as a Task except for Yellow Highlight:

•  Remove unused “Out of the Box Fields” from the Page Layout

•  e.g. Account Record – No of Employees and Annual Revenue

•  The most important fields, those that are updated and maintained frequently, should be high on the page and above the fold (like a website)

•  Group “like” fields together in page sections •  e.g. if education is important on your Contact records, create a section for

these fields (School, Major, Graduation Date, etc)

•  Use a Checkbox field instead of a picklist with only “Yes” or “No”

Make Data Entry Easy

•  Be consistent with the Tab Order throughout the org

•  Some fields you can’t remove

•  e.g. Case Priority and Opportunity Probability % – if your organization does not use them, bury them low on the page layout

•  Multi-select picklists – show additional lines

Make Data Entry Easy Cont.

If you have a lot of tabs in your org, group them by function or dept.

Reduce Left and Right Scrolling

Don’t cram a “wide” field into a two column layout Use a hidden section (no header visible on Detail or Edit View) for:

•  Multi-Select picklists •  Text Area (255 characters – e.g. the

native Subject field) •  Long Text Area (e.g. the native

Description field) •  URL (if more than the domain name)

Display “Hover Details” … By configuring the Mini Page Layout

Reduce “Click Throughs”

Related List Columns – Choose up to 10 to Display

Configure ALL Search Layouts

Reduce “Click Throughs” Cont.

Not Configured: Configured:

Reduce “Click-Throughs” Cont. – Example: Default Tab Layouts

Not Configured:

Configured:

Reduce “Click-Throughs” Cont. – Example: Search Results

•  Reports – delete the ones you don’t use (reduce the noise)

•  Configure Tab Views (e.g. John’s Open Opportunities in Texas)

•  Make a Field “Searchable” with “External IDs” (e.g. SSN #, Serial #, Employee #)

•  Remove related lists not used by your organization off the page layout

•  Controlling the sort order of related list records (e.g. most recent up top)

•  Use consistent naming conventions for Reports (e.g. “DB -” for reports used in Dashboards & “LINK-” for reports used in Custom Links)

•  Scrub Profiles for any and all extra apps / objects / tabs

•  Enable Floating Report Headers, Inline Editing, Enhanced Page Layout Editor, and Related List Hover Links

Other Areas to Explore...

•  Using Record Types to display only the relevant fields for a given type of record •  Can use Workflow Rules to update Record Type; progressive data entry based on Stage

•  Lookup Filters to make sure users can only select a valid parent

•  Approve records from a Chatter Feed (Winter ‘12)

•  Create Triggers to auto-create records when appropriate

•  Use Visualforce / Apex to build custom interfaces for complex process •  Great example is for multiple simultaneous record entry like time sheets or expenses

Other Areas to Explore Cont...

As an Administrator – How did you do? What have you done to make Salesforce easy on your Users?

Usability Testing Boot Camp

Four key things about Usability Testing

•  One-on-one conversations §  Focus Groups <> Usability Testing

§  Time for you to listen and ask questions

§  Not the forum to teach, explain, justify, depend, argue, etc. §  Strive to remain neutral at all times; harder if it’s your baby

§  Critical to take action based on feedback §  Else users will think their feedback didn’t mean much

§  Ongoing, iterative process §  One round won’t cut it; need to stay in touch with users

Step 1: Planning

•  What feature / process to assess? §  Creating a new Opportunity, submitting a Forecast, etc. §  Best to test in a Sandbox if you have one

•  Who are the end users? §  Sales team, other Admins, Operations team, etc.

§  Crucial to talk to the people who actually use the feature / process §  Schedule them 1-2 weeks ahead of time; bribery helps §  Try to talk to ~5 users per concept

§  Where to talk? §  Find a quiet space with a computer and no distractions §  Plan on 45 – 60 minutes, depending on topics §  Don’t let location stop you; use screen sharing for remote users

Step 2: Testing

•  Set expectations up front §  Not here to judge/train/defend, here to listen and get better §  Please be honest and critical, not going to hurt feelings

•  Start by having the user show you how they do ______ §  Create a new Opportunity, submit a Forecast, etc. §  Encourage talking aloud, explain their actions

and their frustrations §  Take notes, either you or someone else

§  Circle back and talk about what they did §  Ask non-leading, open-ended questions

§  What areas were frustrating for you? §  What could make this easier for you?

Step 3: Acting

•  Get stakeholders together immediately after to debrief §  Document and prioritize issues §  Decide on appropriate solutions

§  Mock up your solution in a Sandbox

§  Go back to Step 1 and start again!

§  Once you’ve got the solution into production, publicize it §  “Based on your feedback…”

Question and Answer