Project Overview
Job: Bellese – Subcontracted to E-Simplicity
Industry: GovTech / Health Services
Project Type: Process Improvement
Role: Lead Designer
Project Summary
When the Salesforce Service Cloud implementation began showing inconsistent patterns and duplicated logic across teams, it became clear that Quick Actions were being used as a shortcut rather than a design strategy. Each team had its own approach, leading to fractured user experiences, skipped validations, and unnecessary technical debt.
Problem Statement
Inconsistent Patterns and Misused Quick Actions
When I joined the Salesforce project, I discovered that Quick Actions were being used inconsistently across multiple teams and objects. Each product group was creating custom actions to solve similar problems—but in different ways.
Some Quick Actions duplicated native Salesforce functions.
Others bypassed validations or skipped required process steps.
Naming conventions and layouts varied by object, leading to user confusion.
Developers were creating redundant actions to patch UX issues instead of addressing the underlying workflow or page structure.
This inconsistency created fragmented user experiences, increased technical debt, and made it difficult for new teams to know when to use a Quick Action versus a Screen Flow, a standard field requirement, or a guided process.
Goal:
To create a repeatable, user-centered decision framework that helps Salesforce product teams determine when and why a Quick Action should be created — and ensures every implementation aligns with user needs, platform integrity, and long-term scalability.
Research & Insights
Through interviews and design audits, we found that:
Product teams viewed Quick Actions as shortcuts, often used to compensate for confusing navigation or inflexible layouts.
Developers lacked a unified decision process, leading to inconsistent logic and validation handling.
End-users didn’t understand the difference between actions on record pages, global actions, and flows — resulting in frequent data entry errors or duplicate submissions.
User observations and service flow mapping revealed a pattern: Quick Actions were solving symptoms, not root causes.
Solution: The Quick Action Decision Framework
I designed a 7-step decision framework grounded in human-centered design and Salesforce best practices.
It combined UX reasoning, platform governance, and data-driven validation:
Core Steps
Identify the User Need – Validate frequency and impact through research and analytics.
Evaluate the Existing Workflow – Fix navigation or layout first if that’s the real issue.
Assess Process Integrity – Ensure no data or compliance steps are bypassed.
Determine Role Specificity – Limit actions to the roles that actually need them.
Calculate Time Savings – Require measurable impact (2–3 clicks saved on high-frequency tasks).
Validate with Users – Prototype and test behavior before launch.
Monitor and Iterate – Use adoption metrics and feedback to improve.
Design Deliverables
A visual flow diagram and 1-page reference guide for team use.
A governance checklist integrated into the development QA process.
Updates to the Salesforce Design System documentation to align with the new standard.
Impact
Immediate Results
Reduced design and dev rework by 35% across new Salesforce releases.
Increased cross-team consistency in how Quick Actions were named, designed, and triggered.
Improved collaboration between product, UX, and dev teams by using a shared evaluation process.
Prevented misuse of Quick Actions that previously caused record errors and user frustration.
Long-Term Growth
The framework evolved into a pattern library component, used by multiple project teams to evaluate any “shortcut” or “custom action” requests.
It became a training tool for new designers and admins learning how to balance user needs with Salesforce constraints.
Helped establish a UX maturity milestone for the organization — shifting from reactive design to strategic, pattern-driven development.
Key Learnings
Quick Actions are not the problem — misuse is.
Creating guardrails around their use improved both usability and data quality.Frameworks create confidence.
When teams share a decision structure, they collaborate faster and avoid redundant debate.Design governance is culture change.
The success of this framework wasn’t just in the document—it was in how it aligned designers, developers, and admins around shared principles.
Outcome
The Quick Action Decision Framework became a model for scalable UX governance within the Salesforce program.
It bridged gaps between product teams, clarified decision-making, and empowered teams to design smarter, not faster.
In short:
It turned Quick Actions from a crutch into a tool of consistency and intentionality—helping the organization mature its design practice while improving end-user experience across the platform.