Salesforce UX
Salesforce UX Design Certification — A study log.
A personal journal of my preparation for the Salesforce UX design certification.
I did it. I finally did it. After months and months of procrastination, I finally booked a slot for the Salesforce UX Design certification. It's on 16th July, at 11 AM.
I am a teensy bit excited, nervous and anxious all at the same time. It's been quite some time since I have written exams (10 years to be precise). So yeah, there are some nerves.
With a week to go, I have chalked up a schedule to go through everything — the notes I made, the official UX Design trail on Trailhead and brushing up on the basic UX Design concepts. Fingers crossed, I can complete all this revision by the Friday before my exam.🤞
Why do this?
The idea to journal my journey as I do this struck me when I woke up this morning. Maybe this could help someone in some way? It could also be a push for someone to take that exam as soon as possible. Also, an even bigger push if you have been debating whether to get Salesforce certified.
I'll share all the study material I will go through the whole week and my thoughts about the exam post-completion. I hope this motivates someone just as nervous as me to take the exam.
I am excited to start my revision and take you all on my preparation journey. Let's go! 👊
Saturday, 9th July — let's do this! 💪
In a good mood today, so I made banana bread for breakfast. Baking sure was a therapeutic way to get that nagging feeling I have had for days since I booked my exam date. Armed with bread and a steaming cup of peppermint tea, I settled on a comfy chair on the balcony — with the bonus of great weather — and took my notes for a spin.
I started with the first section of the Salesforce trail, "Prepare for your UX Designer Credential", titled, Discovery. I skimmed through my notes while keeping each module open on my laptop. You would have thought most of the information would have leaked off your brain, having finished the modules quite long back, but some of the pointers did remain (Thank you, brain). I spent an hour doing this, then took a break to dig into cake and tea. (Yes, I had cake for breakfast, sue me 😬). I spent another 30 minutes reviewing the notes and stopped for the day. I didn't want to overdo it with a week to go for the exam. My brain can forget things quickly, so I am taking this revision time slowly, one section at a time.
With tomorrow being a Sunday, I am unsure if I will get any studying done, but let's hope I do.
Sunday, 10th July — to study or not to study?
Well, it's a Sunday. And it turned out to be quite the lazy and relaxed one. You'd think I would be guilty of not studying, but honestly, no, I didn't. I welcomed the break before a long week of work and revising for the exam. I sorted out my notes, cleaned my desk, painted for a while, watched a movie, had a quick workout session and went for a walk. Feeling quite relaxed, I am all set for the week ahead.
Here's to a fruitful Monday! 🥂
Monday, 11th July — let the week begin!
Guess who also decided to join my weeklong studying party — Auntie Flo 😑. Yes, that dreaded time of the month had to come the week I was preparing for a necessary certification (Whyyyy!). Armed with several cups of hot peppermint tea and a painkiller, I set to work. Best thing? Due to the unpredictable weather, everyone was asked to work from home — sooo bring on the pyjamas! It's time to study from bed. (I didn't do it in the morning, but I did it in the evening because I needed to 😰)
I restarted with the first section on the prescribed trail for the certification — Discovery. With my notes open, I revisited each module, taking in the essential points and noting anything I might have missed. I read the entire section thoroughly through the morning until lunch. This 2-hour session helped me nail this section down. Some topics I found would be necessary for this particular section —
- UX Research — understand the methods and process.
- UX Personas for Salesforce — take in all the personas for each cloud and what they do.
- User Stories — the what and the structure
- Business Process Mapping — the different types and their needs
- Go through the other modules in this section to keep yourself safe.
To get a fair idea of how the exam might be, I referred to (and will continue to refer to) these links. These also helped me narrow down the topics to cover —
I set another 1-hour session at noon to tackle the human-centred design section of the trail. Most essential to focus on here — Relationship Design, Conversation Design and Inclusive Design. Sit with these for a while, and you should be good. Read through the remaining modules.
I'm going from easy to difficult with my preparation for the exam. The Lightning Design and Declarative Design sections need some extra oomph, so I am keeping that for later during the week. Tackling the more straightforward stuff reduces some stress in your preparation — believe me, it works. It makes me feel considerably confident in getting through the exam.
That was a heavy Monday, but a good Monday. I even got ahead with reading the material I set aside for Tuesday.
So, adding up — two hours in the morning, one in the noon and about half an hour going through it all and prepping for the next day — about three and a half hours of studying on Day 1 of exam week.
Onwards to Day 2! 👊
Tuesday, 12th July — this is getting interesting!
How does anyone work in rainy, gloomy weather? All I wanted to do today was curl up with a big mug of tea and a book or go back to bed. Sigh! But no. Neither happened.
Today, I focussed on covering two more sections of the trail — Testing and UX Fundamentals. Sadly, the Testing section of the trail has links that aren't even remotely related to Testing — so the first 15 minutes of the prep day involved hunting down topics from the links I have shared above. If you have been involved with the testing phase in your UX Design career, this section should be a breeze. I have a decent idea of the several testing methods, so tackling this section was easy.
Below are a few links I checked out in preparation for this exam section. I'll update this once I go through the exam on Saturday.
- Qualitative Usability Testing
- Tree Testing
- A/B Testing
- Handling Unconscious Bias
- Testing Web Accessibility
- Biases when Testing
- Card Sorting
- Heuristic Testing
- Moderated vs Unmoderated Testing
Per what I have read, understanding all these methods and topics should be sufficient to get you through the exam. As mentioned, I will update this post on my experience with the test.
UX fundamentals — the most important topics here are the ones on Accessibility. I have seen most folks talk about this, so please cover this as well as possible. Give this link also a read to learn more about the WCAG guidelines. Rest, go through the modules in this section, and that should hopefully be good 🤞
Today was another 3-hour session, with Testing taking a little more time since it involved digging through the internet to find out what was needed to pass the section. UX Fundamentals was pretty straightforward, so that didn't take much of my time to cover.
Tomorrow will be a long day because I tackle one of the biggies on the trail — The lightning design system. And if the weather continues to be gloomy, I might take myself up on the offer of sleeping through the day 😛 Or not. (Why am I like this? 🤦♀️)
Wednesday, 13th July — The LDS monster! 👾
Right … is this the time I start panicking looking at the number of things to cover in the Salesforce Lightning Design System section? *Cue "panicking now and wondering how I am going to remember all this stuff for the exam" mode* 🥲
I am going through the entire LDS website now, and the sheer amount of information there is overwhelming. I mean, from where are the questions going to pop up? Am I supposed to look into all of the component blueprints? What are some key points that need extra focus? Do I need to go through the CSS bits? *Welp*
Right now, this is what I am and will be studying based on the research from the many blogs I have read —
- Component Blueprints — give everything a read-through; hopefully, that should be enough. (link to the SLDS is above)
- Design Tokens
- Iconography and Icon Library
- Styling Hooks and naming conventions
- Systems Design with SLDS
- Basics of Lightning Web Components
I'll share a simple piece of advice here — haunt the SLDS website and digest as much information as possible. A surface-level understanding of what's going on should be good.
I did spend the entire day haunting the SLDS website and feel pretty good. (No, I am lying, I am crying inside 🥲). I feel much better than I was in the morning when I looked at the website full of information and felt lost. I took a couple of work calls and a mentorship call in between the revision to get my mind off the exam, and that felt nice 😊
Am I going to pass this Saturday? Let's hope so 🤟 If not, I still think the learning is valuable, and that's okay. Maybe I will reattempt the test at a later date in that case.
The last section of the trail is Declarative Design, which gives me the creeps. I am considering spreading it over tomorrow and Friday, along with a final revision of all the modules.
Today's study time — three hours plus another half an hour on revision.
14th July, Thursday — Declarative Design 😰
This section has the most weight for the exam, and that's what is making me cry. I checked through the links to see what could be the most probable topics and narrowed it down to a few important ones. Okay, now it's looking achievable, so … let's do it!
It finally stopped raining today, and the sun peeked out in the morning. Hallelujah! I took that as a good sign 😬. I decided to head to the office today for a scene change. Sitting at my desk for three days with rainy, gloomy and sordid weather irritated me, so I carried all my notes and decided to study at the workplace. I tackled a few pending tasks with the team in the morning and, after lunch, revised concepts from the dreaded section.
These were some of the modules that I covered today —
The last two are slightly long, so I spent some extra time on those and the reason for covering less today. To balance it out, I revised the LDS section again because that is still giving me the scary vibes 🥲
With about two hours spent on those three modules and half an hour on revision, a good two hours of studying happened. Tomorrow is the day before the big day, so god knows how long I will be in front of the books to cram in as much as possible.
15th July, Friday — Declarative Design, Revision and Aaaah! 🤪
Is it Friday already? Whaaaat?
On a good note, today was an even brighter and sunnier day. Good signs. Excellent signs. I look forward to a day of good preparation.
I went for a walk in the morning, came back, freshened up and picked up where I left off yesterday. Adding to the good signs, I squeezed in a good one hour before breakfast and heading to office. I covered a major portion of the section and felt good about it 😇
At work, I spent another good hour finishing off the section. Aah! What a feeling it was to have finally finished all the sections! I took a well needed break post completion to get some work done and also have some fun with the team. Drove back home slightly earlier than usual, made myself a hot cup of tea, and spent the next 2 hours revising the important concepts from the beginning. At about 7:30, I shut all the books and decided to stop once and for all. I could do one more revision in the morning before the exam. I think I did enough for the week 🥲
The topics covered today —
- App Customization Lite
- Lightning App Builder
- User Engagement
- Flow Basics
- Salesforce Adoption Strategies
- Browsing through the remaining modules, and not stressing much about those. The above five seemed the most important ones that I found from my research. Again, never know what will happen 🤷♀️
Today was solid four hour session along with revision. Told you it was going to be longer study day than the others, didn’t I?
I Netflix-ed a movie post dinner and listened to a Harry Potter audio book before going to bed. I felt good. Hopefully that translates to tomorrow’s exam 🤞
16th July, Saturday — D-day! 📘
Well, well, well. What a gorgeous day for an exam! It’s bright, sunny and so beautiful. Decided it would be best to take it another walk to calm the nerves. (They sneak up on you, don’t they. The nerves). I still feel pretty alright now, but I will take one last look at some essential concepts before getting myself ready for the exam. I have decided not to be too phased in case I don’t get through today. I pass, good. I don’t, also good. I might get an idea of how the exam is to give it another shot. Let’s see.
See you all on the other side of the exam pond 😊
I’ll discuss the exam in Part 2 of this post. Do you think I passed?
See you there! 👋
