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Service instances redesign experience

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OVERVIEW

IBM Cloud Pak for Data (CPD) includes a variety of services, including: AI, Analytics, Dashboards, Data governance, Data sources, Developer tools, and Storage. 

CPD is a platform that can be deployed on public, private, or on-premises clouds. It unifies services across the analytics lifecycle, including: Data management, DataOps and governance, Business analytics, Data science, and Automated AI. 

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CPD is available in two deployment options:

  • On-premises software version: Built on the Red Hat OpenShift container platform

  • Fully managed version: Built on the IBM Cloud

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MORE ABOUT IBM Cloud Pak for Data

DURATION

June 2024 - August 2024 (3 months)

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​​FEATURES DESIGNED

  • ​Service instance landing page

  • Details page

  • Instance creation flow redesign

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MY ROLE

Lead UX designer​

Problem statement

Cloud Pak for Data administrators and data scientists cannot easily access navigate through the Service instances feature and cannot easily discover important features like Launch service capability and accessing Services catalog.

Impact

Impact: The lack of “integration” between Service instances and services catalog means user waste time and lose context as they switch back and forth between applications. Value of Service instances cannot be realized by users where they need the information the most.

Research

I started with a Heuristic evaluation to identify issues with current experience. Majority of the pain points were identified in navigation and overall consistency. I categorized issues based on severity scale: Critical, Moderate and Minor and focused on critical and moderate issues first.

 

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Gathering as-is screenshots and creating a user flow

I create a user flow for each new project to go over steps taken by the user in order to see an end to end experience and making sure no interaction gets missed. Also, I capture as-is product screenshots to take account of current information architecture and latest data to incorporate in redesign.

 

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Iterations

I started with paper sketches for Landing page ideas, call outs, how to display details for a selected instance etc. and then information architecture before transitioning into Lo-Fi wireframes in Figma.
 

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Lo-fi ideation for Landing page.

Service instances are presented as tiles here. Once a tile is selected, the details are shown in the side panel

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Design decisions:

  • Card format with main focus on 2 actions:

      View Details and Launch instance

  • Details page expands to a side panel, rather than a secondary page (as-is)

Got feedback on

  • Exploring table/horizontal formats for the launch page

  • Number of instances clients usually see on their screen. Additional features should we include in the overflow menu for each instance.

  • Add ability to show and sort based on CPU usage/memory/etc.

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Mid to high fidelity designs

After several feedback sessions with visual design and product management. I created two design options with their set of advantages.
 

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Design considerations

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Pros: Consistent with other Cloud Pak for Data feature areas. like ‘Monitoring’ where design offers a tile view for quick scan and key call outs.

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Pros: Easy to read layout.


Cons: Cannot show all metrics at once. Need more information on priority information to display vs hiding other metrics possibly under ‘Details’.
 

Solution #1
 

Solution #2 (chosen for final designs)
 

Design considerations

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Pros: Mimics the current data-table, presents all column metrics


Pros: Potential to scale / add more metrics.


Cons: Can show only up to 5 to 6 instances depending on user's screen size without scrolling.

 

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Other features designed - Service instance creation

Improved creation of service instance which require user to leave the feature and invoke creation from services catalog streamlining the creation process.
 

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Impact

  1. Fostered stakeholder engagement

  2. Completed in depth research

  3. Improved customer effort significantly and reduced IT support.

  4. Successfully handed off designs and delivered in the release cycle.

Next steps

  1. Addition of monitoring capability.

  2. Enhance the home page designs even further to add more filters, search capabilities.

  3. Provide a dashboard view of chosen service instances and alerts on them.

Thank you for reading my case study!
 

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