UX design · Internal tools

Salesforce GSA Toolkit

100% of guest service ambassadors reported the redesigned toolkit was significantly more user-friendly (post-launch user testing)

Duration: April – July 2022 (12 weeks)
My role: Lead UX Designer; research, design, and testing, working with a second designer, 2 content designers, and 1 PM
Tools: Figma, Photoshop, Mural, Google Sites

Guest Service Ambassadors at Salesforce HQ assist ~15,000 employees, guests, and public-park visitors a month across a campus of three towers (61, 43, and 30 floors), and the site they depended on daily was one most ambassadors described as unusable in our initial research. I led a research-driven redesign through two tested iterations.

The real problem

GSAs answer campus questions in real time: floors, amenities, events, contacts, ever-changing policies. Their toolkit buried campus information below the fold and behind confusing navigation, and the building pages were walls of text. When the tool of record is slower than asking a colleague, it stops being the tool of record: turnaround slowed, ambassadors improvised other resources, and employees waited.

The old GSA Toolkit homepage with campus information buried below the fold — The before state: the most-needed information had the least visibility.

Research

I interviewed GSAs about what they needed the toolkit for most, where it failed them, and how they actually worked around it. Synthesis pointed at three failures: the most-needed information (campus/building info) had the least visibility, navigation demanded too much digging, and pages weren’t scannable under time pressure.

Interview synthesis board clustering GSA feedback into failure themes — Interview synthesis: the three failures were visibility, navigation depth, and scannability.

Iteration 1: One click to any building

The V1 redesign made each building’s information reachable in one click from the home page, broke tower pages into labeled sections instead of long lists, and consolidated scattered resource links into categories with recognizable icons.

V1 redesign home page with each building reachable in one click — V1: every building one click from home, tower pages broken into labeled sections.

Iteration 2: Tested, then restructured

8 GSAs user-tested V1. Navigation and visual clarity scored better, but testers said building pages needed to be broken down further. V2 split each building’s content into sub-pages, trading a click for much faster scanning. That trade came directly from watching ambassadors work, not from a heuristic.

V2 redesign splitting each building's content into scannable sub-pages — V2: building content split into sub-pages, a click traded for faster scanning.

What shipped

The toolkit used at Salesforce HQ: search, prioritized campus/GSA information, an event calendar covering all three buildings, and a categorized resources page for at-the-desk tasks, onboarding, and key contacts.

The shipped GSA Toolkit home page with search, prioritized campus information, and event calendar — What shipped: search, prioritized campus information, and an event calendar across all three buildings.

Outcome

In post-launch user testing, 100% of guest service ambassadors reported the redesigned toolkit was significantly more user-friendly and that daily tasks got faster.

“I’ve been able to answer employee’s questions quickly and easily, even as a new hire.”

Guest Service Ambassador

What I’d measure today: time-to-answer for the most common questions, before and after. That’s the metric the whole redesign existed to move.