Nalini Kotamraju: "An Organizational Story: Salesforce Lightning Design" Enterprise UX 2016 • June 9, 2016 • San Antonio, TX, USA http://2016.enterpriseux.net

1. An Organizational Story: Salesforce Lightning Design
System
Enterprise UX 2016, San Antonio, UX, USA - June 9, 2016
Nalini Kotamraju, Ph.D.
Senior Director, User Research & User Experience, Salesforce
nkotamraju@salesforce.com
@nkotamraju

2. Salesforce. What do they do, again?

3. user experience
designers | researchers | prototypers | ux engineers

4. Researcher encounters Design Systems !
Design Systems ! CSS ! Framework ! Subclasses !
People ! Relationships ! Organizations ! Politics !

5. A good year for
Salesforce Lightning
Design System

6. Why did the Salesforce Lightning Design
System Succeed?
Question

7. It’s not about technology
Hint

8. It’s about people
Answer

9. Solving problems
Theme 1

10. Solving Problems

11. Addressing People’s Needs

12. Customer & Partner’s Needs

13. Solving problems
Addressing people’s needs
Theme 1
# designsystem

14. Addressing Salesforce Employee’s Needs

15. “Designers were frustrated at the
delta between what they envisioned
and what actually got built.”
- Salesforce UX Team Member

16. “CSS is a bear. Engineers want to write business logic
and sexy back-end code. They don’t want to mess with
moving stuff around on a screen.”
– Salesforce UX Team Member

17. “We removed the gap between
what designers want and
developers deliver”
- Salesforce UX Team Member

18. Trust in people &
cultivate people’s trust
Theme 2

19. Trust in Design
DESIGN PRINCIPLES

20. Trust within the Design Systems Team
Sliding scale of giving a f&*!

21. Build on Engineering’s Existing Trust

22. Create Trust by Showing (Not Telling)
“Living components were a
conversation starter. We built them as
quickly as possible. The faster we
worked, the more we got done, the
better the conversations went.”
- Salesforce UX Team Member

23. Share. With people. Lots of people.
Theme 3

24. Share Often & Document
Brown bags
CSS office hours
Chatter group
Slack channel
Town halls
Sprint reviews
Bug bashes
Document. Document. Document.

25. “Giving it back to the community.
That’s why it’s open source.”
- Salesforce UX Team Member
“Going open source made all the
difference.”
- Salesforce Executive

26. Sales is in the name.

27. Summary
Addressing People’s Needs
• Theme 1
Trust in People & Cultivate Trust in People
• Theme 2
Share. With People. Lots of People.
• Theme 3

28. “No one has it all figured out yet.”
Design Systems

29. thank y u

30. An Organizational Story: Salesforce Lightning Design
System
Enterprise UX 2016, San Antonio, UX, USA - June 9, 2016
Nalini Kotamraju, Ph.D.
Senior Director, User Research & User Experience, Salesforce
nkotamraju@salesforce.com
@nkotamraju