foreign to have everyone here today to talk about the ROI of ux the cost of not paying attention to your users before we begin I'd like to introduce you all to Glide fast Consulting and tell you a little bit about the company named the 2022 and 2023 servicenow Elite partner of the year now I'd like to introduce Tim engstrom and David Arbor your presenters for today's webinar I'll pass it off to Tim hi good afternoon everybody I'm so happy to be here with with David Arbor the ABP of Professional Services I'd like to start off with talking about what is our experience going to be so we're going to start off we're going to talk about what Roi is I think most people know what it is but we'll start to discuss that as how it affects ux and how ux affects it and we'll dive in a little bit about how you can do that and hopefully at the end we'll have time for some questions so to start off the ROI is defined by business these are the top five things that most businesses are looking for whether it's increasing Revenue decreasing costs uh more market share more revenue from existing customers and the most important you know increasing that shareholder value these are all very important and all of these things can be affected by the user experience so to start off with I love this slide there are design Centric companies out there and there's a company that actually monitors them there's 16 that actually qualify to be considered a design Centric company and in 10 years a ten thousand dollar investment would yield a 219 increase over that same investment in the s p which is huge it shows the importance of what design can actually do how it can influence the entire company and its standings time.com um they changed how their their site Works uh using the infinite scroll and it decreased their um their bounce rate which is huge you really want to keep those people on your site and just one small little change can really make a great impact ESPN sat down and they listened to their users and if your Revenue jumps 35 and just because you listen and take into consideration what they do you know you've hit some good Roi there sometimes as simple as color color has such a powerful emotive effect on people taking the time to figure out which you know which shade of blue is going to resonate most with your users you can see Bing did it and got an 80 million dollar boost in that wouldn't we all love that so that's a good Flex right that's a lot of how listening to your users actually can drive Revenue so how do we get there how do we quantify this Roi with pretty pictures let's take a look we have two sites for the same company the one on the left looks like maybe it was built in 1995 one on the right it looks a little bit more modern right off the bat you're going to get this perception the one on the right in my opinion there's a little bit of subjectivity here it feels simpler it feels cleaner and you get this little bit of sense of Competency there that these people are modern they know what they're doing while the one on the left feels like they don't take the time to update they they're stuck in the past you may feel that they may not keep up with the modern changes that computers are doing and you may be hesitant to want to use them so you can see just in perception alone dealing with design and ux can make a huge impact on whether or not someone's going to click through and engage with you so that's where we're going to talk about a little bit of a myth here and this always bugs me design is about making things look pretty yeah making things look pretty is part of it but that's not the Crux of it design has always had intentionality and since I have come on to Glide fast it's been a little bit over a year that I've been here really working to put together a program that is based on this intentionality and part of our methodology is that we listen to the users and make sure they can enjoy the experience really finding the light is what I like to call it and this really brings in the users wanting to use the site we work to solve business problems working with our clients to make sure that that they're heard that we understand their problems and this next part gets a little bit tricky but getting the users to solve those problems and that's it that's a huge thing that's where we move that Crux from pretty to intentional to to useful to driving towards that Roi Roi is going to be based around problems especially when it comes to users and their user experience and I have for examples uh these come up a lot with a lot of the people that I talk to users are having a hard time figuring out what to do that's a common one users really dislike having multiple systems and portals to work in that's another one especially nowadays where you get Brands fighting for attention fighting for their own brand to have a place within users relationships within businesses things are too complicated for the users and this is huge uh there's just so much noise out there how do we break through it to make sure that we get users to what they want to do with how to solve their problems that can solve your problems and then employees are quiet quitting this one may be a little bit of a stretch but we're going to have fun with it and see if we can actually make a difference there make an impact but to start off I'm going to bust that myth a little bit still about design and now when we dive into user experience we're talking less about making things pretty less about the Aesthetics and more about the psychology behind it you can do a quick search on the internet for uh cognitive bias in psychology as it relates to user experience and you'll find lists of upwards of 100 or so different terms and theories and principles and this is where you really start to see things change things really make a matter and we're the intentionality comes in because we can make a pretty sight for you and it will be awesome it will be it will be engaging but once we start tapping into this and understanding that there is this behavioristic side of design you really start to see differences made you really start to see those users move through in an intentional matter they get things done they solve business problems and that's what we're really here for that's why servicenow is built it's to solve problems to solve your problems and to be able to move forward with it and now we're all starting on the same place we're all starting with whether it's employee Center Pro employee Center or service portal we're starting with this great framework it's built so strong and robust there's so many Tools in there that we love to jump in there we love to tap into them surface them put them in a prioritized order it's great the biggest problem I see is this is a general solution and it would be perfect if we all had the same users if we were all doing the same business if we all had the same problems this would be perfect but we don't and that's what makes us unique your business is unique your problems are unique so we need a unique solution that speaks to your users that address your problems so let's see how we can do that so our first problem the users are having a hard time figuring out what to do it's a very common problem anytime you throw something new up at your users you're going to get you're going to get hiccups of like a good example is we're probably all familiar with Facebook every few years or so they do a massive redesign and they'll throw it out there at their users and you will just see people screaming and yelling why did you change this why you do this I can't find this it's the impact on the user is huge to be able to go in and smooth that out to to guide them to present things in a way that make things useful and intentional is hard so let's look what we can do if we're going to solve for reducing the load on the users what we're looking at here is a usability Roi in this particular situation we're looking at several things I like to bring in a human factor this provides a welcoming environment when the users are coming in here this particular brand I chose to tap into a lot of their their messaging and welcome them we are here to help they know that this is a service portal now they're they're welcome they're brought in and providing a two-fold Next Step where they have the option to search for a solution or just to go right into the ticketing system to ask for assistance followed by by a nice little bar down there with specific things related to them you say well how can this really help how are we guiding them there's a prioritization effect here when they come in they see the greeting the next two biggest sections are balancing the search the self-help they get their own guidance or to jump to asking for assistance in this specific scenario what the client really wanted to do was to get people in and get them out and get them to understand that this is how they were gonna get their help so we prioritized the the color of the button as a yellow which is going to draw your eye so you're having this hierarchy to get the user to go where they need to go to get the help that they need which helps get tickets in the service desk to prioritize them to get them out and to get that help that they need so how does this affect Roi when we do this well in this particular instance um I should just step back you can see my equation down there at the bottom of what I used all the equations that are I'm using are based on an average employee cost of about thirty dollars an hour with the number of employees being a hundred so we're looking at a recovery time of getting people in getting what they need and getting out so that they can get back to work this could potentially result in a savings of about three hundred thousand dollars a year based on this equation your companies will obviously be different but that is the goal of what we're looking for users really dislike having multiple systems and portals to work in this is a real a real problem in most companies you're going to have portals for ADP for Paylocity for your benefits they're going to be all over the place being able to minimize that where you can will really help your your users out now a good example of this and to me why apple is a big success is that early in the days they created this consistency that not only for their Hardware platform and how they created their operating system but they created these human interface guidelines that they used for third-party software they sent this out whenever they had a developer working with them to help them understand what the goal was for the platform and to build your software accordingly and this started that that role of usability of making things human-centric and to me this is this is why apple is so successful it's not that they create a great platform which is which they did but they brought in this consistency so when you're using Apple software most of it is familiar whether it's from a third party or apple itself there's going to be a lot of things that have that consistency that that feel that sometimes even that look that will help you drive through and get you that understanding to get you in to what you need to do quicker beyond that there's the Nuance that is the complexity and leveling up and getting that expertise but getting in is smooth and it's clean and it's operatable so as we go in to look at our portal sites we really need to look at embracing your brand and it's your brand that should have that consistency when a user comes in and they know your brand whether it's from working with your corporate site or any other portals there should be that consistency that they know when they hit that they know what to do or they they recognize your cues your your subtleness the the flows that you have to me that is where the importance comes in so we can look at this as the a result of familiarity and this goes uh both ways in the fact that sometimes you don't want them on your site as much because you want them to get back to a productive work Style which is fine but maybe on a customer service portal where you maybe want these people to come in to get more familiar with your brand that familiarity helps them to stay in there stay engaged with it and feel comfortable with it it tells a great Brand Story that you've created this consistency it elevates your brand up and just elevates the company in general so we're looking at for this equation so time on Portal we're looking at when somebody comes into a portal we're looking at approximately 60 minutes per week and we're averaging that out with the 30 an hour cost with 100 employees so we're looking at three thousand dollars per week of time spent on Portals which come to that average of about 156 000 a year Solutions are too complicated for our users this one's going to be a fun one I'm going to tap into and talk about how we Leverage The Psychology and cognitive bias in order to solve a lot of these problems now for this one the client needed a very simple in a simple solution they had an internet they had other portals they wanted a simple way for people to resolve their tickets yeah to make it as clean as possible they wanted to reduce the effect of their fulfillers of their support staff start to eliminate those emails those Taps on shoulders so we worked with them to come up with a very simple solution but even if it's simple there is a lot of psychology that falls behind this you can obviously see that there's direct access to get into the tickets there's the transparency of the the my active items where you request it there's also a jump to password resetting and inner circle is what they call their their Intranet and then we've lowered the prioritization of the self-help because they really wanted to create that ticket flow now for the psychology part we start with what I uh what's referred to as Hicks law and we're reducing the number of decisions that a user has to make that is a huge key in simplification as they come here there's not a whole lot that they feel like they can do there is a lot in the back end there's a lot of knowledge articles there's a lot of stuff that they can get to but we're reducing the load right off the front which comes down to cognitive load which is another cognitive bias which is reducing the mental effort so by simplifying it through Hicks law reduce the number of decisions work easing the burden on the user a lot of times with these support portals with ticketing they're coming here because they have a problem there's already a lot on their mind they want to get it resolved they need to come in here and resolve it let's make it as friendly and simple as possible so they don't have to think they know where to go and then framing is another principle that I like to use where we're presenting info in a way that helps the users make decisions and part of this is we have a greeting up here get the I.T help you need now we've pulled that down and Associated it with the request help button which is part of their brand color yellow so you have this tie-in of they need to come here to get help there's the button with a close tie to it we're framing those two really close together to get that cognitive balance so that they know oh this is the help I need I'm gonna go here and now that yellow button is also based off of a cognitive principle called the Von restaurov effect when people notice items that stand out more now because we're driving the users to these tickets by using the Von restaurov effect on this button that's your primary focus It's associated with everything but it really pops out and helps to to solve this business problem and then we come with the aesthetic usability effect and this is the perception that designs with greater Aesthetics are easier to use so keeping it clean tapping into their brand humanizing it a little bit we're really looking at creating that that perception that this is going to be so easy to use we're again coming back to reducing that cognitive load where they're not having to think they're going to feel a little bit more relaxed as they come in and present their problems and then the last part is the familiarity bias by tapping into the brand we're creating a a comfortable place for them they're familiar with it it's hitting into that consistency so that they know what the buttons are we're using the squared off buttons we're using the pop-out icon so that they know what it's going to be so they're not having to relearn as they come in all of this results in creating a great workflow that will help Drive the users through in a way that resolves business problems and satisfies the user's needs by doing this effectively we could potentially save upwards of three hundred and twelve thousand dollars a year based on this is a what I like to call it a four hours a week problem solving issue uh with your thirty dollars an hour at 100 employees he said the results May Vary based off of your actual numbers but you get an idea of how this user experience is is affecting your bottom line now this is a fun one people are quiet quitting it's a global phenomenon is it really that bad well a disengaged employee can cost around thirty four hundred dollars out of every ten thousand dollars of an employee's salary so we're looking at a third of their cost is being lost because they are not engaged and this is huge do we really want to lose that money so how can we do it well what's great about servicenow's platforms especially employee Center Pro is there are so many features so many widgets um there's content delivery that yes I think you'll find this is a fully functional internet which leads to the the unified approach to communication and information and ticketing why don't we go down this road so let's let's look at it here so if we were to create an internet there is a lot of features that we can we can focus on bringing it in we can create Delight really bring in aspects of your brand that are are pleasing and really speak to your users uh humanizing effects I love to bring in faces especially if they're from your users that really helps bring them in it causes a connection to it one of the big things about employee Center is their content delivery system uh whether it's their their Banner section that will bring in uh you can do specialized content that you can Target different roles different departments different locations and really speak to them and when you're speaking to your users on a specific level and not just generally to the entire company their eyes open a little bit they're going to be more engaged creating a platform that has access to things that they request as well as upcoming events that they may be interested in all will drive forward to it's not necessarily going to solve engagement but creating that effort between the company and the employee will start to drive that up they will feel like they're included and that they're part of something and a lot of times that's what they're looking for are you talking to them are you engaging with them are you trying so when we're looking at engaged productivity if we can boost them upwards of that 18 which is what we're looking at in the in the drop boost that 18 get that back you know a 1.15 million dollars in savings that's that's wonderful let's let's bring that on or if we can reduce turnover turnover is huge it costs so much it's 125 percent of an employee's salary is what it costs to get them in and train them and find them and we're looking at approximately 30 of your Workforce year over year has the potential so if we can reduce that that's money in your pocket and a lot of that does happen with the user experience I do I always like to say that yes we can do it digitally but user experience is everywhere it's face to face it's in your offices but just starting creating that effort having a platform like this is a great way to enable that connection enable that engagement and to provide that effort towards your people and I do like to look at this um for every dollar spent on ux companies see up to a hundred dollars return it is a great investment it's an investment in people and people are your asset they're the ones who are doing the work so if we can make things as easy as possible for them effortless for them if we provide that engagement we will start to see um these returns but we have to ask why why are we doing why are we going through all this effort well for one it's the bar is being raised outside of the industry whether it's people are using Uber in their their normal life Starbucks lemonade Duolingo Yelp they are all creating these great user experiences these are the experiences that your users are Desiring to use intentionally by themselves they're choosing to use these now the thing is in work we think that we have a captive audience and they just have to use it in order to get those benefits but why why do we need to stop there if we want to elevate our brand if we want to have in potential employees seek us out we need to present an experience to them that resonates what they choose to use on the outside now the cost of not utilizing good ux there is user experience regardless you don't have a choice there is always going to be a user experience it's whether or not you choose to invest in creating a good one or letting it sit if you don't invest in it you could have disappointed customers and users your sales could be lower there could be increased development time bad brand reputation decreased motivation of employees there is a lot that goes on some of the stories that I've dug up in looking at this and companies not taking the right actions to create this user experience like Google Glass for me Google is really great at pushing things out there and seeing how if consumers react so Google Glass for instance a really good idea but they were missing some points that that really affected the user adoption for one there was the Aesthetics it was weird looking you would want to wear this on their face there's the expectations of why do I want this Hardware doesn't sell Hardware software sells Hardware or experiences sell Hardware so by not walking people through how this is going to affect their lives there's no connection there and the last part of that is privacy when people saw somebody walking around with Google Glass they could recognize that as an interface device they felt like they were being recorded there was a huge backlash from the community who did not understand and it really drove Google to I I could be wrong I think they may have abandoned it or have gone back to the drawing board because of a lot of the feedback that they got from non-users and then probably one of my most favorite stories is Walmart they came out with a one question survey now I love one question surveys they can do a lot you can get a lot of feedback because it's simple for your users to just answer one question the problem was the question that they asked it's would you like Walmart to be less cluttered there are so many things wrong with that statement when it comes to asking users for their opinion part of it is it was negatively framed you would never want to answer that yes I mean does anybody ever want anything cluttered it's just not um not good and it was able to be answered with a yes or a no most user based questions you want them to be a little bit more open-ended to get get them to answer it for you not telling them how to answer now of course in the end they got a ton of yes we want Walmart less cluttered now because of this they actually went in and put a program in place to go through and declutter all of their stores but they lost sight of what made Walmart unique it was their diversity it was the amount of stuff that they had they actually lost 1.85 billion dollars because of this program based off of that single question they didn't ask the right questions they didn't listen to their users properly so how do we get there I'm going to bring David on and he's going to talk about some of our process and how we get there thanks Tim um yeah so I guess uh we're going to talk real quick about uh sort of our workflow and how Tim's uh you know how the developers and Architects and whatnot work with the design team here at livest to really you know bring these things to Life we'll start with metrics right good good data equals greater design one of the things that the design team does when the the perfect or best design for a customer is ask questions and so so the answers to those questions are everything right that drives how the design you know how your users are using the the tool and ultimately where the design goes so asking those questions and having or having answers to those questions and answers that are not guessing you know will lead to a design much quicker and a build that's much quicker and a better user experience overall and that goes to user surveys as well right so talking to your users making sure your users they have what they need and what they what they really need to interact with the the system I'm guilty of this as well we think we know what our users want right going into something it's ah we want it to look a specific way or we want uh you know this really cool feature that I'm seeing in websites these days but then you come find out that that's not what your users need all what you're you know they may need something completely different so user surveys and actually information from your users is is super important when it comes to building the the right design and empathy again asking questions of users but also putting yourself in those users shoes uh sometimes with Technical and again I'm speaking from a technical perspective here too right another designer perspective but from a technical perspective I I know that I I think very technically and and it's very hard to put yourself in somebody's shoes of a user shoes that's not your thinking technically um but that's that's what designers do that's why we have a design team that that's really why they've come into uh or why we've started this uh this app in this program uh to get to what our users or what our customers actually need rather than what they think they need so at Glide fast we have What's called the design experience and this is the experience the good ux that we give you uh the customer when we're trying to get to your good ux so we have an experience for you uh to lead to your good ux and is we use workshops um so we'll design workshops um where the questions will come up of your users you know Tim and his team will ask the users ask questions to get the users to understand what the user is how they're using it and how where their pain points are really and also how we're going to address business requirements and goals and just big picture outcomes right so if we if we build something that's super beautiful and super effective but it doesn't actually meet your your outcomes and it's probably not going to be sold very well on your side um so we need to make sure we're hitting all of those points as well and then conversation about use cases how you're using the tool now or how you've used the tool in the past and and you know where the gaps are that we need to fill after all that's done after we've had a design Workshop there's iteration right there's back and forth iteration from The Artisan team with uh with the with the clients or possibly even the clients design team they may have a design team as well there's iteration back and forth until we get to a point where we have a design desired design and the design that we feel and the customer feels is going to be the best design moving forward I mean and that's handed off to our development team and our development team then comes in continues to work with the design team right to build what they've designed but also as things come up they may need slight tweaks or changes they're working with the design team the whole way and the customer uh to make sure that at the end of the day the design we're delivering is exactly what the customer needs and all of this how quickly we can we get in prior to having a team here and I know that this is true in other organizations as well if we hand over a design not even a design but you know some some requirements to uh somebody who's technical who's building you know actively doing the work and building uh our servicenow implementation I mean a lot of times that's going to result in something that you know you may we may think is going to be very usable and have a great experience at the end of the day it doesn't so it's happened many many times but in my experience only I've seen it happen many many times um so one of the ways that we get you to a quicker Roi this way is design experience can be very quick right we're not designing in service now we're designing in a tool that we can iterate on very quickly and change the the designs on very quickly so we're not actually going in and building anything in service now at that point we don't start building in service now we have the design that we need and so what that does is makes our our development time for your experience much shorter than it would if we were going at it from more of a technical perspective so Glide hits is our public facing uh portfolio of uh portals that we've built employee Center portal there's customer service portals HR portals there's all sorts of things in here that we have to show you guys you know we've removed some branding off of them so that we're not showing off our anything for our clients but this is where you can go uh with that website that you see down in the bottom right there to actually see some things that we've done internally and this is being updated constantly if you have any questions you know please reach out if there's anything that you see that maybe uh you know you think might might be good for you or your your company but also we can you know obviously these designs are were specific to customers and we got to the designs with customers with this design experience your design will likely be a little bit different um but this is good for inspiration and yeah please visit we like showing our work and I think this brings us to the question period all right there are chat I think for you guys how does such as marketing or technology development that's a good question I would almost say that all of those can be influenced by user experience because marketing it comes down to working with people you're trying to influence people if you can understand the behaviorisms behind that you're creating a ux for the marketing same for everywhere else everywhere that is touched by people can be influenced by good ux here's another one for you guys are there any specific tools or methodologies that can assist in assessing the ROI of ux projects there there are many um servicenow actually has its own analytics system that runs in the background I am a huge fan of data anytime that we can get data really helps us drive that what I I call uninfluenced behavior of the users whether it's their time on site their click-throughs they're how many are coming in uniques versus returns those are all huge because they're not being influenced by I guess people this is their actual actions um other other parts about our user surveys and just being able to ask them questions to figure out how they use it why they want to use it what their expectations are is a great way to do it there are also a lot of other tools like a hot jar is a really good one it provides heat mapping so you can see where they're lingering around a site where they're tending to go there there are a ton of tools um that we we recommend but just data in general any data you can get helps build a more robust user experience what are some potential long-term benefits that organizations can expect from prioritizing ux and measuring its Roi well some of the benefits any time that you engage with your users when you present that effort of trying to create a better experience you're creating that bond with them you're you're bringing them in you're asking their their opinion you're presenting something to them that they want to use so you're hitting it on a lot of different levels you're creating hopefully creating that consistency so that they have a smooth experience they're familiar with it they don't want to go anywhere else they're comfortable here they're engaged so hope we're lifting that 18 of lost engagement by providing something with that effort that you want to provide for them so long term the more you put into user experience the greater return whether it's your users your customers your employees it you will see a huge return even if it's most even if it's a human return of Smiles in the office that is huge how does the role of developers evolve or change when working with design Centric Solutions compared to traditional development methods you know we typically develop agile manner um you know based on that what we do unless the customer has a different manner that they'd like to to develop in um but you know agile means you're always iterating you're always making slight changes and you'll to your to the things that you're building as you go along and if you're doing that if you're building a UI UI then ux for sure because it's actually the build portion but um if your UI is an iterative process that you're building in an agile agile way back and forth with the customer right hey I've made this change to the UI let's look at it as a team and from you know in our the end of our Sprint and see what it looks like and see if we need to make changes uh that's far less efficient than having a design up front that we've already all agreed upon uh is going to be the best path forward and we can we could put that the work and the hours into something that we know is going to be good um rather than something that we're going to have to iterate on you know into the future so that changed the workflow completely right when we have that design versus we just have stories or requirements that go on uh based on business needs I hope that answers the question can you provide insights into how to create a business case for investing in ux considering the ROI perspective yes definitely um there are a lot of stats there's a lot of data um that supports the process for ux and validating that it is useful and that it actually returns a lot um like I said I do talk a lot about the human factor and how we create this engagement we can create this delight and we create happy users but there's also the side where we look at from a business perspective of how does this affect the bottom line whether it's from unlike the equations I had earlier in in the webinar where we're talking about um reducing time on site we're increasing workflow stability uh we're creating consistency all of those help leverage that that bottom line whether it's well let's take a look at let's look at it this way there was a study done by the University of California Irvine that talked about um distractions and the the number that they come up with for every distraction that an employee encounters is 23.6 minutes of recovery time to get back to work so if a user encounters a problem they're going to have to solve it so they've been distracted they're away from their productivity they're having to go into a portal the quicker that we can remove this block to get them satisfied that their problem is on the road to recovery we can get them back to work there may still be that recovery time but we're reducing the amount of time it gets to that recovery time to get them back into that perfect workflow so to me that's one of the hugest things when it comes to business requirements infinite and the value of ux um someone also asked a follow-up question Tim to one of your responses before is there a specific site with information about which colors elicit which emotional response you had mentioned do you have a tool that you use to find out that information I can't think of a specific one off the top of my hand and that gets a little bit sticky if you're mostly us-based colors are going to have a very specific meaning but once you hit globally that's where things really start to get sticky um and you really have to be careful because colors mean different things in different cultures so a lot of it is it's like look at your brand palette and start to to go through it and I would almost look at it specifically color wise and do a search for how does this color respond or find the amount of quality for this color across the globe and a lot of times that will bring up you know whether or not you know people in France respond to purple as a royalty whereas in China purple could mean something completely the opposite so it's just a matter of fact I don't have a specific spot for that because it is kind of a little bit all over the place and there's a lot of diversity but the tools are out there specifically for that what are the specific ways in which design Centric Solutions influence the overall software development life cycle it changes the entire flow right so rather than building things and and coming back and iterating on those things that we've now built in service now which may take an entire Sprint uh we're building things in Adobe XD which take very little time and actually you know I've been on multiple projects with Tim actually where Tim is has moved things around and changed things live for the for the client to look at so it's not even like let me to take this away and come back in a couple days but it's let's make these changes right now so you can see them um so that changes the the flow completely you know rather than that iteration back and forth we're just iterating in in very small uh amounts of time to ultimately pass on that design and and something that we already know that we're going to want or that we need at the end of the day how to evaluate technical debt versus design impact and value to make a cost-effective decision so actually this this is where we come into that relationship that symbiosis between design and development I like to work really closely with the development to make sure because there in in service now in the in the portals there is this terminology of out of the box and we like to maintain that out of the box because that maintains the upgradability um the maintenance that goes along with it so I I like to push things as far as I can styling wise to match your brand to please your users to create these great workflows and by working with the development team I can understand how far I can push it while still maintaining that out of the box so it's it is that that a little bit of technical debt um but if we incur that up front while still maintaining that out of the box I think there is a huge importance in that symbiotic relationship to to work together closely so we don't get too much of a technical thing yeah great point to add to that what Tim's getting that too with the not incurring technical debt means we're not going to go in and customize widgets unless we absolutely have to right because those widgets now become your something you own you have to maintain going forward and that they're not going to get updates you know whenever you get an upgrade from service now so what we'll do is is build styling on top of the styling that already exists in that portal or in that employee Center uh instance and uh our designers come at the problem from that angle right like we'll tell the customer hey we built you something completely custom but you're going to be incurring this technical debt and it's going to take this amount of time or we can build you this design that we have here which is you know working within the boundaries that we have you know the the platform gives us and a lot less technical debt but also getting to the to the design that you you need and require awesome I'd say that probably brings us to our last question too can you provide examples of how design-centric Solutions have improved the efficiency or effectiveness of software development projects I think about a project that we actually worked on together Tim uh with a customer where we were iterating back and forth with the design gave the customer a few uh different design options and went through this entire process the the you know design experience and I believe what the customer said to us at the end of the meeting was that his heart was a flutter with the design that he was seeing right in front of his face because we've gone through this process and you know talked to the users for that organization and there was excitement about the the design um and and what they were going to be getting at the end of the day right because all they had seen was an out of the box I think that this was Employee Center actually all they had seen was the out of the employee Center which is great but you know it I think whenever you get that emotional response uh from the from the customer they become even you know that much more uh involved and that much more invested in the in the end product um and I think it makes the whole thing go smoother across the board right every time you show back to them they understand that's exactly what I asked for you know you're giving me what I need and what I ask for here it just makes the process smooth you know much smoother across across every aspect Amen to that actually we did just get one more question that came in if a company is using employee Center or employee Center Pro already you will develop design with that framework in Portals we have four portals using employee Center Pro oh yeah intention of employee centers to bring everything together everything internal together into one portal I'm not sure about the statement about having four portals using information employee Center Pro again the intention is to have a taxonomy that you can now build that that ends multiple areas that would have been covered by multiple portals but is now all in one portal so yeah we absolutely go at it if if we know this in the employee Center we're actually pushing every customer now for internal portals to go employee Center because there's no reason not to right employee Center is based on the same technology it just adds we just get extra things so if there's if we're talking about a net new implementation here a portal we're going to absolutely recommend and push employee Center if it's an existing portal and you want to combine multiple portals into one employee Center uh implementation so that you have more of like an intranet then by all means that's what we specialize in we can absolutely do that for you and we will we do design from that perspective yes awesome thanks David um Glide it's linked our link it's um off of the glidefast.com website as well I think those are all the questions that we had thank you everyone today for joining and a big big thank you to Tim and David from Glide fast for presenting today's webinar the ROI of ux today's session was recorded and will be sent to all of you in a follow-up email um right as we get it and any other questions that arise please reach out to info glidefest.com and we will do our best to answer any and all questions you have thank you and have a great rest of your week foreign [Music]