The Struggle: Managing Cloud Security

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In 2020 alone, data breaches exposed more than 155 million people's personal information. DevOps teams are under serious pressure to manage thousands of resources across cloud environments, attempting to track constant security risks.

My aim in designing OpsCompass's inventory was not only to help engineers see what they had in their cloud, but also to find the signal in the noise. What events are truly worthy of attention?

Phase I: User Research

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To start, I needed to understand the day-to-day problems a DevOps team member faces. After interviewing current and potential OpsCompass users, I came back with a key insight: DevOps teams knew their security and compliance was important, but most of their environments were so large that it was hard to know where to begin when fixing problems.

Phase II: Ideation

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My interviews validated our product team's assumptions: users were overwhelmed. One major way to lessen the cognitive burden was to provide users a comprehensive view of their cloud inventory and locate security risks. My preliminary sketches included user story mapping and early interface exploration.

Phase III: Wireframing + Usability Testing

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After refining sketches with my product team, I tested wireframe prototypes with a handful of users. I had two key takeaways: the inventory page was a welcome addition, but DevOps engineers still needed a direct way to identify their top problems and promptly fix them.

Phase IV: UI Design

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With a clear direction, I began creating high-fidelity mockups. Early iterations placed emphasis on effective dashboard visualizations and a robust inventory table.

Phase V: Iteration

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With v1 of inventory implemented, we honed in on improving the compliance workflow, which had been impacted by our far-reaching inventory changes. I designed a prominent dashboard card showing users problems they can fix right away, explored problem visualization, and revamped the framework page user flow and interface.

Before + After

Results

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Introducing cloud inventory was a major improvement according to user interviews and customer feedback on Capterra. Says one of our customers, an IT executive: “For the first time, having a clear ‘map’ of our cloud was pretty exciting."

We fell short of our hefty goal to increase user time per session by 100% in 9 months — however, we saw an increase in new users and better retention of existing users, which signaled upward trends and set our focus on refining the user journey.