Case Study: UI for SDN Management Software

About the Client

Our client is the leading networking software and hardware company based in the Bay Area and operating globally. The product we’ve been helping it develop is an SDN (Software Defined Networking) solution for building high-performance virtual networks, virtual machines and overall cloud infrastructure.

Challenge

The SDN solution requires an intuitive, wizard-based user interface (UI) to manage private and public clouds, physical and virtual workloads and devices. The drawbacks of the previous UI included:

information overload, making it hard for end-users to understand,
the lack of a coherent information architecture & style consistency,
an outdated and non-intuitive layout.

A key project goal was to redesign the UI to be scalable, visually appealing and easy to use while meeting our client’s business needs. The other goals needed to be met:

ensuring component compatibility,
making the system clear and easy to manage for administrators,
making the application easily and consistently expandable according to customer requests.

Results & benefits

Improved user experience
Unloaded application – free of unnecessary elements and more user-friendly
Significant reduction in the number of user errors thanks to logical information architecture
Easier network administration process
Faster, consistent application custom development thanks to ownership of the design system being kept and the new style guide being used
Time saved – prototyping of all functionalities enabled testing before implementation
Increased competitive advantage with a more user-friendly product
Increased customer satisfaction and loyalty

Solution

Our approach to building a user-friendly interface started with competitive and heuristic analysis and interviews with in-house experts. We gathered data about user needs, and defined user stories and journeys. Based on that knowledge, we designed low- and high-fidelity wireframes and created interactive prototypes. Finally, we tested the application with end-users and did design reviews iteratively. Our team of two UX designers worked closely with front-end and back-end developers to ensure that the new UI was designed and implemented properly. We used the following methodologies:

Design thinking
User-centered design
Scrum

The team took an iterative approach to designing new functionalities and tweaking the existing ones in order to make them more intuitive and user-friendly.

This scheme presents our approach to the UI design process.

Deliverables included:

The early visual style concepts, designs of the first proposals of the home screen with basic functionalities
Visual boards and user flows
Wireframes (low fidelity prototypes) of the screens based on user needs and the client’s specification, determined navigation and functionalities
High fidelity implementation-ready prototypes

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Case study

UI for SDN management software