UX Best Practices
Summary
Curious about how we solve problems and design user-centric products at ServiceNow? During this session, you'll learn about the framework behind our user experience design process and the various roles and activities involved within each phase. You'll also get hands-on experience with a rapid ideation session.
Key Insights
-
•
ServiceNow's design principles—Focus, Flow, and Love—guide inclusivity, workflow efficiency, and emotional engagement in product design.
-
•
The Experience Design Methods (EDM) provide a clear, cross-functional process that aligns designers, researchers, engineers, and PMs.
-
•
Skipping foundational discovery phases leads to designing irrelevant or unusable products, as shown in their doggy daycare app example.
-
•
Empathy and journey mapping are key activities to deeply understand user needs and context before designing solutions.
-
•
In ideation, generating a broad range of ideas first, then narrowing based on feasibility and priorities, balances creativity with practicality.
-
•
Using tangible artifacts like storyboards and matrices helps align stakeholders and focus on user benefits and product values.
-
•
Rapid low-fidelity prototyping encourages quick feedback loops without wasting resources on details too early.
-
•
Close designer-engineer collaboration during implementation and thorough visual specifications ensure design fidelity in the final product.
-
•
Frequent user testing and prioritizing high-severity issues early help deliver user-centric and high-quality designs.
-
•
Organizational growth brings chaos which can be mitigated by consistent processes and clear communication standards.
Notable Quotes
"Focus principle ensures everything we design is inclusive, accessible, and simple to use across cultures and countries."
"Flow principle reminds us to accelerate both the customer and the users to get their work done effectively."
"Love principle is about emotionally supporting users, celebrating achievements, and creating visually beautiful products."
"If we skip the discover phase, we don’t understand the problem and end up designing something irrelevant."
"We encourage everyone to think big first then trim down based on priorities and keep a backlog of good ideas."
"Experience Design Methods is tailored for our organization to align research, design, engineering, and product management."
"Rapid low-fidelity prototypes let us get quick feedback without stakeholders focusing on minor visual details."
"Visual specs must include behavior, styles, accessibility, and edge cases so developers build accurately."
"Post-implementation reviews help catch bugs or style issues before customers see them, maintaining high quality."
"Building trust in the user is fundamental, especially in digital products like our doggy daycare app example."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"If you’re recruiting for research projects, look critically at your job descriptions for embedded barriers to diverse candidates."
Joi FreemanA New Vantage Point: Building a Pipeline for Multifaceted Research(ers)
March 30, 2020
"It's not about hitting a specific NPS target but about improving from where we are now and tracking the trend."
Jack MoffettUX Metrics That Matter and The Future of our Design at Scale Conference: A Community Conversation
September 22, 2022
"Stakeholders are users too; the product we’re sharing is the research and learnings for their decision-making."
Sara LogelYour Colleagues are Your Users Too
March 29, 2023
"Experts develop insights by isolating patterns and data; as designers, we already do this daily."
Theresa NeilDesigning for Wellness: Specializing in Healthcare
May 22, 2024
"The story of the immunotherapy patient and his daughters became a riff that executives remember to understand complex life impacts."
Christian MadsbjergInfluencing Strategy
March 31, 2020
"If there isn’t safety and connection, you get a culture of transaction and silence that kills innovation."
Alla WeinbergDesign Teams Need Psychological Safety: Here’s How to Create It
September 8, 2022
"The small things are how we do the big things; there’s no shortcut to real change."
Amahra SpenceDesigning for Liberation, Rehearsing Freedom
November 18, 2022
"We think of AI not just as a maker of stuff but as an enabler of experiences."
Josh Clark Veronika KindredSentient Design: New Postures for AI-Mediated Experiences (2nd of 3 seminars)
January 29, 2025
"If you have a sense of ownership in the work, you naturally feel more engaged with the outcome and output."
Anna Nguyen Emily BroganWhy Our Voice of the Customer is Better Than Yours
March 10, 2022
