What do a loyal San Francisco Giants fan, a Salesforce UX Designer, and the voice behind the Giants Twitter account have in common? Meet Alan Weibel, Lead Product Designer, Design Systems at Salesforce, who is all three. As with a lot of Salesforce employees, his journey started as a user of the Salesforce Platform. With an All Stars Award under his belt, he’s destined to accomplish magnificent things. Although, it might be hard to outdo the proposal to his wife.
Let’s meet Alan:
How did your Salesforce adventure begin?
My Salesforce adventure began a few years ago. I didn’t know anything about Salesforce at the time, but I needed to learn fast for a product I was designing. After learning about Salesforce with Trailhead, I used Community Cloud to design and build a partner community. Later in my career, I worked for a Salesforce partner and redesigned their app’s administration interface using Lightning Design System.
As I became more familiar with designing on the Salesforce platform, I got increasingly impressed with it’s power and flexibility. So when a recruiter approached me about a job on the Salesforce UX team, it was a no-brainer to take the call.
Why did you choose to join the UX team at Salesforce?
The Salesforce UX team has done an amazing job at shaping Salesforce’s products. I experienced that first hand as a user and designer of Salesforce apps. As a systems guy, it’s my passion to solve complex design problems at scale. I also wanted to learn from top enterprise product designers to improve my craft. The Salesforce UX team has a great reputation in the design community and I wanted to work with a team that would inspire me.
Tell us a bit about your role on the UX team.
At Salesforce, I lead the design of our Lightning Design System by partnering with product designers and supporting their contributions. Together with this team of designers, we ensure that all of our products have consistent interfaces. I also support the development of the tools that allow us to focus on user experience. But, none of this could be done if I wasn’t surrounded by talented designers and engineers that support me everyday. Seeing the results of our teamwork is extremely rewarding.
During your time at Salesforce, what has surprised you the most?
The culture. During the interview process, I could easily see how much value Salesforce placed on its unique culture. Since taking my role, the trend has only continued. I am surrounded by humble coworkers and people who don’t think twice about offering to help. To be honest, the culture is contagious.
What has been your proudest moment at Salesforce?
My proudest moment at Salesforce so far was being voted by peers as one of the Tech and Product All-Star Award winners along with a fellow product designer. Salesforce UX supports employees’ ideas and promotes leadership from all team members, regardless of their title. Because of this support from my management and the teamwork from my fellow designers, I am constantly being set up for success.
Quick facts about me:
My wife and I run a nonprofit where we give US military veterans a day off by providing all expenses paid trips to baseball games. We named it Catch24 after the best baseball player of all time, Willie Mays, and his famous play in the 1954 World Series. We are both big Giants and 49ers fans. We met in college where she played softball and I played soccer. I proposed to her at a Giants game and there’s an awesome story behind it.
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