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
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COVID-19 accelerated ServiceNow's development cycle from the usual six months to a biweekly release cadence for return-to-office applications.
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ServiceNow's return-to-work product integrates with partners like Microsoft for contact tracing and Uber for essential worker transportation.
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Employee sentiment surveys are embedded to ensure companies respect readiness and comfort levels when returning to the office.
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Facility management features include PPE ordering and desk cleaning scheduling linked to actual occupied workspace data.
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ServiceNow's Atomic Design-based system organizes UI components into four hierarchical layers: base components, experience components, page templates, and core experiences.
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The drag-and-drop UI builder enables designers to create and tweak interfaces themselves, conserving engineering bandwidth for backend work.
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Designers collaborated remotely across multiple time zones using tools like Miro and Figma, enabling rapid, creative iteration during the pandemic.
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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.
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ServiceNow employs its own products internally before public release, facilitating immediate feedback and early problem detection.
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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."
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