After meeting with customers, partners, and our own Expert Services team, the Experience Enablement program identified key UX activities you can complete to up-level the user experience of your implementations. We added those activities to the Now Create implementation methodologies to align with the technical, product, and organizational activities our Leading Practices organization identified.
To access Now Create content, a ServiceNow ID is required.
These 14 new activities start in the Get Started phase and follow your implementation through the Deliver phase. This methodology update guides everyday UX activities your project team may consider. Many activities are core to any project (e.g., Understand User Experience, Stakeholder Alignment, and Persona Workshop). In contrast, others may be relevant for specific projects (e.g., card sorts & tree tests only make sense when implementing catalogs and knowledge bases).
If you are working with a partner to implement ServiceNow, this guidance can help shape your engagement to support your goals around delivering exceptional user experiences.
You can view the new activities by visiting ServiceNow Create and looking up any success packs with an “ Implementation “ project type.
I'll break down each of the significant activities by phase:
Understand User Experience (Get Started)
As you begin your ServiceNow project, your UX activities should focus on helping the team understand what User Experience is, how it relates to your project specifically, and what your team currently knows about the users and processes. Generally, your team will do some reading, take a Now Learning course, and complete a brief UX Readiness Checklist. Ultimately, the team will be prepared to focus on delivering a great user experience at the end of the project.
Define User Experience Goals (Initiate)
Instead of rushing to define the solution, the team must develop a shared understanding of the current state of the problem space the implementation aims to address. The activities in this phase focus on establishing a baseline for how users interact with the current solution and what stakeholders hope to focus on during the project. When you exit Initiate, your stakeholders will have a shared understanding of the current state of the user experience and be aligned on what improvements the project will address.
Design the User Experience (Plan)
In the Plan phase, the UX lead establishes how the user experience will feel when delivered. The collaboration between project team members to define the desired future state of user flows and the experience of the user interface(s) contributes to developing the project backlog. The team will also leave this phase with an understanding of the users they are solving for and with feedback from those users on the proposed experience.
Refine the User Experience (Execute)
Now, it is time to start "building." As the project shifts focus to the configuration and development of the solution, the UX activities focus on getting iterative feedback from users on completed stories and refining the experience based on that feedback. A constant feedback loop should exist between the project team, users, and stakeholders to ensure the user experience meets expectations.
Evaluate the User Experience (Deliver)
You did it; the project is ready to go into production! Here, the new UX activities help you establish how far you've come with evolving the user experience. The work you did set a new baseline for the user experience, and our task here is to determine what that baseline is and identify all unaddressed experience-related defects and enhancements. At the end of this phase, you leave with a new user experience score and a backlog of future opportunities to up-level the experience.
We are excited to provide this material to you and want your feedback. What activities are you adding to your implementation plan? What's working well? Where do you need more guidance? Let us know in the comments how the new ServiceNow Create UX activities work for you.
