 Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Knowledge 16, brought to you by ServiceNow. Here's your host, Jeff Frick. Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We are wrapping up. We're getting close to the end of day one here at ServiceNow Knowledge in Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. About 11,000 people. Wow, how the conference has grown since we first covered it four years ago. And really excited for our next guest so I don't think we've had on before, but we hear more and more about how important design is. And it was highlighted in the keynote today with the watch. So we're excited to have Troy Asmunon, product design and passion. And most importantly, you get to work close with Fred, he said. Yes, so welcome. Yeah, thank you. I think it's good to be here. Thank you very much. So we were talking a little bit about prior knowledges and heard back in the day, it was just basically a surf party under tents down in San Diego. So looking at your LinkedIn profile and your love of surf, you must fit right in. Yeah, it was interesting. I was working up in Hollywood for a couple of years and I wasn't really able to move the needle as much as I wanted to. So I decided it'd be best for me to come back home and work in San Diego again. And just kind of randomly really, an old friend of mine or colleague of mine was working at ServiceNow and he was telling me, hey, you got to come over here. Like you could be really, you could really make a difference here. And I said, oh, and I looked and I said, oh, this looks like some kind of big enterprise thing. Like, you know, they're probably gonna make me wear a suit every day and you know, I'll have to get a haircut. And he kept bugging me. And so eventually I said, okay, I'll come down there. And I submitted my resume and got rejected. And then later he's like, try again. So I said, okay, try it again. And then I got accepted. And then I started working there and then within just a few months I realized it was a great place to work. I've been able to do a lot of innovative things here and working with Fred and the Design Experience Organization and really the whole company's been, it's probably been honestly the best job I've ever had and it's on track to, I think I'm gonna be here longer than any place I've ever worked at before. I have kind of a short attention span but this is working out all right so far. Good, you've got a really varied background. Of course, we looked at everybody's LinkedIn page before they come on in and you did a lot of fun things but I think the surf shop in the Mildeyes probably had to be the most fun. Good, as long as you can handle the reef rash with the shallow reefs over there. But yeah, that's good too. But I think this has a little more staying power than just slinging surfboards. Absolutely, so we go to a lot of shows. We did about 80 shows last year and we'll do more than that this year. And one of the themes that comes up over and over again with successful companies is when the founder is still around. Especially a passionate founder and there's nobody like Fred when he stands up and demos a new product or shows some new code or comes out into the audience. I mean, the real passion that people have for him and what he's created is pretty unique and I think it's probably a really integral part of the success of the company and this connectedness that he has with his customers. And obviously, Frank's come along to kind of move the business needle but there's really something special about Fred and in fact, we were joking. He was coding during the keynote today. I think they've got a picture of him. So you said at the beginning, you're fortunate you get to work with him. Give a little insight as to what it is to work with Fred and how he brings that passion and his kind of unique twist and perspective on things into what's become a very big and successful company. Sure, so yeah, working with Fred has been a very interesting experience. He's basically a very, very, very bright man who tends to take a look at things from the final outcome that you will end up with and he starts there. What's gonna be the final outcome of that? And if he doesn't like it, he'll say that's not gonna work. We're not gonna get the final outcome we need. So he's a very results-based individual, more so than anybody else I've ever worked with and it's been a great experience. It is kind of unusual at times because he is so interested in the final results of the typical kinds of business sort of constructs of bureaucracy and so forth. A lot of times he's like, you know what? That's not gonna get us what we need. So I'm just gonna ignore that or just mow that down or run over that, whatever it takes. And initially what was interesting is when I ended up working with him, we ended up working in this small room together. It was random. I didn't interview with Fred. He had just been working with different people and he was like, yeah, I'm not gonna get what I need. Not gonna get what I need. And I think out of desperation, they probably hired me and said, let's try something really strange. And so they brought me on board and I pretty much stayed out of his way. He was, I didn't know him at the time. I just said, okay, so guys, he's quite a bit older than I am and he's really rich. I'm like, who cares? I mean, it's not gonna affect my life and I just kind of tried to listen and see what people were doing and then some conversations came up about design and user experience and I made a few comments that some people thought were thoughtful. And around the same time, actually, I had been changing up my life. I'd been going through some stuff and I'd run out of shampoo at my house and I was just busy doing lots of stuff and getting my new job and I just didn't have time to get more shampoo. And so for a couple of weeks, I just kept using conditioner until my hair just started getting, like really just screwed up, right? Because that's why they give you shampoo, right? Because you need both shampoo and conditioner. You don't just use conditioner. And so finally got so bad that this guy, who I never really talked to but I was in this room with, one morning I come into work and on my desk is like two bottles of head and shoulders or whatever. And that's how we ended up. I said, oh, okay, this is pretty funny. This guy's got a good sense of humor and then we started to talk a little more about better ways of getting work done, what could be more efficient. And it really started, for me, at least it's been a really great relationship because I tend to think about, that would be so cool or I'm very much on the more creative kind of dream side about stuff. And Fred really loves to actually build the stuff and really make it work. And so it's really fun going back and forth from like kind of too dreamy to just get something done now and finding that sweet spot in the middle where you actually go after something that you can achieve, but you think about it a little bit before you get it just completely done and move forward. Right. I imagine it's got to be a lot of fun because when we talked to Fred in 2013, we talked about kind of the story of the beginning of Service Now. Now he always wanted it to be a platform. But as everybody knows, nobody buys platforms, right? Because who's going to buy a platform from a startup? You buy an application to solve a problem if it's a platform that then evolves into other things. So be it, but that's really not the way to get started. So then he built the applications around what he knew which was IT service management. But now as things evolve and he's very flexible to opening up that platform as well as, as you said, what is the user experience? How do people interact with the application? He's not tied to some dogmatic feeling about how that should work. So for you to come in with a kind of a new point of view, really from a design centric and clearly what Apple has shown time and time again, design matters, UI matters, look and feel matters. Really great opportunity, I would imagine, to meld the two things together. Yeah, it was just one of those things, just auspicious timing. And you're right, design is so huge. I mean, people like to talk about Apple, but I think even more compelling is take a company like Hyundai or Kia. 10 years ago, if you were driving a Kia, you'd made a poor life decision probably or just getting off the ground. Nowadays, people like to tell you they just bought the new Kia. And it's not that the engines have changed very significantly, it's that they've got great design sense now and people want to be seen in the car and it feels better to drive. And so you go from a plan B to maybe a plan A, hey, maybe I won't buy the Honda. I think the Kia fits my personality better. I identify with that product. Right. And then the latest fruition of that is the watch that you're wearing that was talked about in the keynote. So for the people that didn't see the keynote, give us a little story on the background of the watch, kind of the vision behind the watch and the reality of what you've got on your wrist right now. Sure, so I don't know if I should show this to the camera at all if that works, if it doesn't. Can you guys see it? Yes, no? Okay, good. Good enough. Lift it up. Whoa, hold on. I'm gesturing. He's gonna put a cool face on the front. Here we go. All right. All right, super. So, yeah, the idea with the watch was, you know, it's funny, the same thing keeps happening. Like when people first started getting the ability to browse on their mobile phones, they ended up, you know, people ended up loading up, you know, desktop friendly web pages. And you probably remember like doing lots of this side ways and in the corner trying to read everything. And then a few years later, technology caught up and you had mobile friendly web pages that where you just, you know, you're just doing the vertical flick, right? Right. And I think the same thing kind of happened with the watches, you know, the watches came out. I actually bought, I was a Kickstarter guy for the Pebble, you know, and then the Apple Watch came out. But the experience, you know, past the hardware hadn't really caught up. We're trying to fit the mobile phone experiences into the watch form factor and it's not ideal. There's less ability to gesture around on the device. There's less that you can see. You don't have the real estate. So my thinking here was, you know, especially with the new watches that have been coming out, they're starting to look really good. There are some really nice industrial designs on the watch front now that weren't even there a year ago. And that's gonna bring a different clientele into the smart watch market. These are people that they want to be seen with their watch. It's not just a tool. And so the question that I wanted to answer was, how do we make a watch face that you can monitor your work on that's so good looking that you wouldn't mind being seen with at a dinner? You know, and it has to be relevant as well. And I don't wanna reteach people how to use a watch. You know, we don't have to put them through an education camp on watches. So that meant going with the kind of natural, you know, round faced watch with some sort of radial way of displaying information. And that's kind of what led us to wanting to show this off today. And I firmly believe this way of displaying information on a smart watch is gonna be something we'll see more and more of in the future. Well, of course, and it goes back well beyond technology, right, back in the day when they started shooting film for movies, they shot them as if they were a play, right? Single camera point of view in the stage in front. And we see it time and time again. It takes a while for the way of consuming to catch up with the new technology. Yeah, people need to catch up with this new ability. That's exactly it. So based on that and some of your design thought, I mean, as you think of functions and applications for that form factor, what are the things that jump out that are just natural or appear to be natural? What are the ones that, hmm, maybe this isn't the best form factor? I think for me, so, you know, I need to get some feedback from other people as we keep moving forward with this. But one thing I see that might be very compelling is, for example, a lot of organizations use charts to determine velocity, you know, how long is it gonna take? For example, for you guys, maybe there's, maybe you have some sort of plan, okay, within five days we'll get all the cube videos cut and up on the website. And there's all these steps that need to take place in this order, this many per day for us to actually reach our goal, right? You have a burn down chart, essentially. Something like that I think can be very useful in this interface because you could track, you know, the expected velocity versus actual. And as it starts to come out of alignment you can actually see the circles start, you know, basically no longer overlapping. You know, they start criss-crossing and then you realize, you know, one of my teams, for example, one of my teams has a problem. My cube team doing the service now videos is behind schedule and I'm gonna have to get involved. I'm not saying that you're going to see it. And I'm looking at Patrick, pay attention. Wanna make sure you don't show up on the watch indicator. So, for example, what if you had several teams and, you know, you were worried about one of them? What if you had an interface on your phone where you could load up any number of faces for the different teams that you're monitoring? And the one that's worrying you right now, you know, maybe this next two weeks sprint there on or whatever, you're near the end of a release, you keep that right on your person and you can just watch and make sure, as things are going forward, that they're going forward in the right direction. So, stuff like that. It's very critical. It's in the forefront of my mind. It's one thing that's most important to me right now is the kind of thing you'd want to keep on your wrist. Much like in the old days, people would do with just the time, because there's no practical way to find out the time otherwise. And is the vision to build an app that runs on an Android watch or runs on an Apple watch? Of course. And we actually have a proposed design for the Apple watch already. It's ready to show. I just, you got to pick one. And I said, you know, this is a little different. People have been working with a round form factor. And I'm a firm believer in sticking with that, which was generated originally by sundials. I think that people respond better than that aesthetically. And so we showed that today. Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think some of your comments, you know, there's been a lot of design work gone into watches for a long, long time. So, you know, why not leverage the work that was done before. Right. So, and I think kind of this new way to work and getting away from email. And you know, you guys are on a good track. So as you look at, you know, what are some of the things you look at from, you know, our daily lives are not work lives that you're trying to incorporate more into, you know, how we get work done leveraging service now. What are some of the, are there some big themes that you kind of work towards? Are there little itty bitty things that make big difference? How do you kind of slice that? I look at everything. You know, I go to a website to buy t-shirts and I might see an interaction that I like or user journey that just seems so elegant to me. And I take it back to the team and say, hey, everybody, try and buy a shirt here, you know, or maybe it's something on online banking or maybe it's something from a competitor or maybe there's a free product that does something that's similar to what we're doing in some aspect. And it just doesn't matter. I'll go in any direction, you know. I mean, I found some stuff on the Home Depot website, you know, a long time ago that I liked. So there's all kinds of crazy stuff. I take an influence from anything. One time, you know, talked about the Maldives, you know, there was one design that I was working on for something that we've released where I came up with the idea while I was trying to catch an octopus. The thing kept changing shape and hiding under a rock. I'm like, you know, what if we could just dynamically change the shape of this thing, just like this damn octopus, I can't get this thing. But so, you know, everything to me is related to everything else. Anything can inspire anything else. You just have to kind of break down the barriers and just explore the space. Right, this is awesome. The other piece I think that's interesting on design is kind of the expected behavior. And it's funny, you said the octopus. I don't know what the Snapchat little critter thing. Yeah, I think he's a ghost. His Audi has a ghost, but he's got little legs and things. But, you know, when we use popular applications and they become kind of part of your, you know, five main things that you interact with, then it kind of, I think, builds in kind of an expected behavior because of the other things that I do. It should kind of work like this. So I would imagine those are again or some design elements that you can pull from kind of what we expect things to do. No, you're absolutely right. So, you know, the consumer space is where a lot of the money and energy goes into now just because literally everybody around us has a computer in their pockets, right? So the market is so huge that it just makes sense for a lot of the money to go into that consumer market instead of the business market, you know? And so that's where a lot of the experimentation, a lot of the risk is being committed to. And we see what works there, especially in our industry, we see what's working outside because, you know, when we hire a new employee that's in their 20s, let's say, you know, they're not coming off of using, I don't know, Bugzilla to find a date or something, right? I mean, they're using Tinder or, you know, they're using Snapchat and these kinds of experiences are what they regard as the baseline. It's got to be at least as easy as Tinder for me to say if I like or don't like something because I use that every day and that's working and it's better than anything else. The best you've had is the best you know of, right? And so that's the big challenge for enterprise software in particular is to be good enough that we're not so bad to people that they wanna go use something else and say I don't wanna use enterprise software, I'll just use a free app somewhere. That's what we're competing against. And it's really challenging too because when you're building a platform, you're not exactly sure how people are gonna use it. You can't for sure know who your user's going to be. It's not like building Tinder. With Tinder, we know you're trying to date people, but if I was just building a swiping app to decide whether you wanna do stuff or not, I don't know what you're gonna use it for. Launch a nuclear attack. Swipe left, swipe right. Oops, wrong one, now you need a confirmation box. What if it's just swipe left or right for some person I like or don't like? Well, I don't want a confirmation box. So there's these challenges you have that are inherent to building an enterprise platform which means that you have to build in a lot of additional kind of reference material to kind of help people as they customize the experience, make it something that their end users aren't gonna throw up their hands and say, forget it, I'm not gonna do this. Right, and it's funny how the best stuff suddenly becomes baseline in an instant, right? It's no longer best of now it's baseline, now it's table stakes. And yesterday. And it's funny, the design, my favorite little design example, I used to share with my kids all the time, is should the song pause on Spotify when my phone rings or should it keep going so it picks up right where it was at the end of the ring? There's no answer, right? It's a design question. It's not a math problem. That's, you're going to options and you pick which one. There you go. So last thing before I let you go, which I think again is a fundamental shift between what was before and what is now is this whole idea of training and adoption and how long and how hard it should be for people to figure these things out. The kids today on the apps that they experience in their life, they don't ever go to training, they never look at a manual. They don't even think, I don't even know if they would know what that means except for in the context of when they go to school. So again, another design challenge, but you're talking about much more complex software than liking, not liking sharing with my friends. So how are you kind of thinking about the concept of training and self-service learning? Well, I think it's contextual. It depends on which product you're talking about, what kind of user you're talking about. But in a lot of cases, that's one of the things I really love about a mobile interface is that it really forces you to make the hard decisions. It's like going on a camping trip and you can only bring what you can carry on your back. Right, right. So a lot of the options that people don't usually use, that 80% of options you don't need on a desktop interface, you just, you don't provide an affordance for them on the mobile interface. You have to go to desktop. And in a way, that minimalism drives a better design because you really get to the meat of the problem. What do people really need? And so if you approach it from that perspective, like we call it mobile first, right? That's why you call it mobile first. You design from mobile first. You design so a user manual is not going to be needed. Excellent. All right, so we're running out of time. Give you the last word. As you kind of look out into the design landscape and you said you look at a lot of things, what are some of the things that have been intriguing recently, some new things that you're like, wow, that's pretty creative, that's pretty innovative. I'm not sure I can use it or not, but it's certainly kind of something to keep an eye on. Okay, yeah, I can mention something. So one thing in particular I worked with. So there's this product, I don't know how specific I'll get, I'll keep it vague. So I was using this product to find out pricing over time for some sort of good or service. And normally in that situation what you do is you want to buy this product at a certain date. And normally what you do is you pick the date and then you go through a list to try and find the pricing. And I recently saw this design, I really loved it, and instead of doing that, what it did was it would take you to a list of that stuff on a mobile device, but then it would also show a trend line underneath over time of the pricing on a Sparkline graph so you could immediately visually say, ah, that's close to the date I was hoping for the pricing to be at that level, I'll just touch that point on the Sparkline and bam, the list updates to show you those lowest prices of all of you, the best deal. That's what it's all about, right? The ability to get people the information they need so that they can make a decision as quickly and as effortlessly as possible. And in the right density, that's the other thing I was thinking. You want low density when you're novice, you want high density when you're an expert on the application. Yeah, you want the ability to customize the experience for you. All right, well Troy, thanks for spending a few minutes with us, we'll have to come down, we haven't been to San Diego, we'll have to come down to San Diego. Go surfing. Visit the office, go surfing, you pop the tin up, it's a little adjunct event for Knowledge 17. We'll have to talk to the team and get that on the plan. Thanks for stopping by. Sounds great, thank you. All right, Jeff Rick here with Troy Asmoon. We are at Service Down Knowledge 16 at Mandalay Bay. You're watching theCUBE, we'll be back on this next segment after this short break. Thanks for watching.