Designing for Clarity: See What Matters

Every day, we interact with tools that either make our lives easier or leave us feeling frustrated. Think of that app that just gets you, the one you instantly know where to tap, or find what you need. Now, compare it to the one that makes you go through five menus for something super simple. The difference between them is in the design, design for clarity. 

The same principle applies in all technology projects. In our case, a well-designed CRM doesn’t just work, it feels obvious like the app that gets you. Everyone, from the sales reps to the data architects, can see what’s happening, why it happens and the next step. On the other hand, when this clarity is not present, even the most powerful system starts to feel like the bad app we all want to delete. 

Clarity – The Power Behind Every Great Experience

Clarity is powerful, but it is often overlooked because it removes friction. Friction is normally the one that gets most of our attention. However, whenever we don’t see either, it is because we are experiencing cognitive clarity. This happens when your brain doesn’t have to work to understand what the next step is. 

Think about Google Maps, you just know what the blue dot in the map means. You trust it and walk confidently. Or on Spotify, liking a song takes less than a second. Finding your liked songs links, takes only a couple more. These are clear examples of cognitive clarity. In Salesforce, the same mental ease is what turns this complex platform into a trusted tool. 

Smooth integration and secure processes help people get started with automation right away, which is key for digital transformation. On the other hand, any doubt or delay can stop digital transformation dead in its tracks.

The Opposite of Clarity: Noise

Now, imagine the opposite: opening a navigation app in which instead of finding the fastest route, we find ten overlapping ones. Or imagine logging into your banking app and seeing random balances, transactions, and alerts with no ties to the corresponding account. In both cases, you would be super confused. 

That’s what many users experience when clarity is missing in Salesforce:

• Multiple “Customer” records with slightly different spellings.
• Flows that trigger each other in loops.
• Reports with numbers that never match across dashboards.
• Long page layouts that bury the most used fields at the bottom.

In this case, the resistance is not to change, the resistance is to confusion.

Designing for People

Contrary to popular belief, clarity is not achieved by oversimplifying. Many good apps and systems out there have taught us that it means revealing what matters when it matters. 

Clear Purpose – Why are we doing this?

A good example of this is Duolingo. The instant you open the app, you know that your goal is to keep your streak. Every screen reinforces it. 

Clear Process – How does this flow?

When you request an Uber ride, you can see your driver’s progress. Visibility on the process is built in.

Clear Data – What does this mean?

When you check your fitness app, your stats make sense: steps, heart rate, calories burned etc., You don’t need to decode or interpret the metrics.

Clear Decisions – Who decides what?

In well-designed experiences, you don’t wonder who is in control. Netflix, for example, recommends a show but you can still ignore it. You control, and that’s clear.

Now, for Salesforce experiences to feel as intuitive, then:

• Purpose Clarity: Implement clear KPIs, processes, and naming conventions. This prevents confusion among sales teams regarding opportunity stages and helps marketing accurately track data for customer journeys, minimizing misunderstandings.
• Process Clarity: Utilize opportunity paths, approval flows, and case lifecycles to make next steps explicit for everyone. This eliminates the need to dig through documents for crucial information.
• Data Clarity: Ensure everyone agrees on data definitions. When terms like “Active Customer” or “Engaged Lead” have a consistent meaning across the board, dashboards become reliable sources of truth rather than points of contention.
• Decision Clarity: Establish good governance through clear ownership, transparent change control, and documented decision paths. This avoids those “who approved this?” questions that can often derail projects.

When apps like Duolingo, or Apple Fitness delight us, it is not because they are super advanced. It is because they make complexity invisible. Salesforce, or any other software implemented at your company, can and should do the same. Designing for clarity means designing for humans first. Because when people can understand what is going on, adoption stops being so challenging. 

The Benefits of Designing for Clarity

As found by McKinsey, organizations with clearly defined communication and ownership models are three times more likely to succeed in digital transformation. In other words, the clearer the system, the faster the change. This is thanks to how people feel when they work: 

• A team that understands their system moves faster because they trust it.
• A manager who can trace data confidently makes decisions faster.
• A client who understands a dashboard believes in its insight.

That’s why clarity has to become a habit within your organization. 

Clarity as a Team Habit

Simple ways to make design for clarity a habit are:

1. Name flows and fields like they are meant to be read and understood by people. Example: “CalculateDiscountOnAdvertising” is better than “Flow1V2.0”
2. Do clarity checks in retrospectives. Ask yourself “would a new hire understand this?”
3. Visualize before explaining, do lucid charts, whiteboards and screenshots. 
4. Document decisions as stories, not tickets 

This will help your team see this as an act of empathy, not just governance, and adoption will skyrocket. Every click, field, or flow tells a story. When those stories are clear, people trust the system. When they’re cluttered, people work around it. As Steve Jobs used to say “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” And how it works, in Salesforce or anywhere else, depends on how clear we make it.