Security Event Manager by SolarWinds

When joining SolarWinds, I was asked to take over the position of a Lead designer on Security Event Manager (SEM). SEM was going through a difficult process of transition from really old Flash based application to a brand new HTML5 interface built on current Nova Design Language used by SolarWinds.

My task was to redesign and improve usability of existing features based on research done directly with our customers while ensuring the new application is aligned with overall design strategy of the company. This meant close cooperation between different organization within the company. Mainly PM for the product, researchers, engineering team, support and sales teams.

Usual redesign process

I would usually start the redesign process by internally researching the functionality of given feature. This would include on-hands demo of the feature followed by discussion about business requirements with the PM. Scheduling multiple interviews with the customers to understand how it is used in the real world. Depending on a feature, this phase would also include a competitor analysis and at least a quick talk with the support team to see whether they track any ongoing issues reported by the users regarding this feature. These activities result in a Discovery document outlining the feature requirements that should be met for the redesigned feature to bring additional value to the product.

Armed with the collected knowledge, pencil and a whole lot of papers I like to start with the quick sketches exploring different solutions to the problem. Quickly iterating throughout different versions I usually leave a lot of versions behind and keep a few to transform into simple wireframes.

I usually follow up with the presentation of my ideas in form of the wireframes to the stakeholders and further iterate on them based on the feedback. When all of the included parties align, wireframes are transformed into interactive high-fidelity prototype ready for testing scenarios.

Prototype is subsequently tested directly with users and feedback is iteratively incorporated into the design. When the design mature sufficiently through this iterative process, it is expanded by detailed information for implementation.

Feature is afterwards monitored after the release to ensure that it is adopted properly by wider audience of out customers. In case of any reported issues, the process is repeated.

Design system

During the work on this project I was also deeply involved in documentation and propagation of SolarWinds design system called Nova. I was part of the team responsible for keeping the documentation up to date and for creation of new specifications of conponents.

Results of redesign

After applying the aforementioned process to multiple features. All of the business-critical features of the old UI of SEM were successfully transformed into a new and powerful UI which is ready for further development.

We collected large number of very positive reactions to the redesign and sparked a lot of interesting proposals and new use cases for further enhancement to the existing features. Feedback was collected using multiple surveys as well as interviews with the users and monitoring the activity on SolarWinds community forums.

Additional work on SEM

As a leading designer on a fairly major enterprise product I encountered significant number of responsibilities other than redesigns of existing features. This included designing a number of new features, both small and big. The process of their design was usually fairly similar to the redesigns mentioned above. However, the first research and discovery phase was usually longer and more detailed.

I was also in a position of an advocate for adopting the current design system into all parts of the application. This also allowed me to influence the direction of the system by directly contributing to it.

Another important responsibility was being a voice of users in the planning phases. Ensuring that the roadmap of the product was about new features as well as iterative improvement of existing ones to make the experience as  smooth as possible. This included communicating the needs of the users to all stakeholders and decision makers, convincing and presenting the findings from regular research sessions with users.

Takeaways

Working on Security Event Manager was an amazing experience. I was challenged to learn a lot about the SIEM tool, logging and enterprise security solutions. I also had opportunity to work with international team of very skillful people which allowed me to strengthen my communication and interpersonal skills.

However successful this collaboration has been, there is always something that can be done better. I believe that few of the features needs further and more expansive research and further development to truly enable users to utilize full power od data flowing into the application.

This cooperation also confirmed for me that sometimes compromises must be made to accommodate goals of the user experience, business and technical possibilities.

Thank You Team!

Last but not least I would like to thank the amazing team of SEM, my peers in UX department and all of the very supportive colleagues at SolarWinds for enjoyable, educational and fulfilling cooperation on this project.