BACKGROUND
A lot of the design work at VMware was reactive to engineering implimentation. Designers would work their hardest to improve user experience without adding costly engineering efforts. I was paired with an engineer to explore one developement cycle using a user centered design approach.
The user experience team at VMware had finished it's first design system. This system was used on the core product, vSphere Web Client. I worked with the Log Browser team as the first team outslide of the vSphere Web Client team to consume the design system.
METHODOLOGIES
Wireframes design, high-fidelity mockups, standards & guildlines, cognative walkthough.
PROBLEM
- vCenter admins could not collect server logs easily to troubleshoot. They would have to manually retreave the logs from each device.
- The UX team needed a usecase to promote design thinking and standards and guidelines.
PROCESS
The Log browser plugin was a new feature to vCenter Server. This meant that there was no legacy product to update and design work didn't depend on collaberation with other features. This provided an opportunity to take the feature through the whole design thinking process.
IDEATION
I worked with an engineer to outline basic functions we wanted to provide for the log browsing experience. The only requirement for the project was to display logs from servers connected to vCenter. We worked together to add additional features that would enhance the experience.
The main UI had controls to select an object to retrieve logs from. Once the logs were retrieved, the user could select which log to view. An important aspect was the be able to filter a log file to show relevant data. Log lines could be shown that were adjacent to the filtered line to provide context.
We also added a find field that would highlight terms specified. The user could scroll the screen to the term by preseting the Nest and Previous button.
PROTOTYPE
Log browser is only useful if the user can click through the experience. I create a prototype with fake log data so we could use it to test the user on the experience.
USER STUDY
I conducted a user study where we brought participants into our research lab. We did a cognitive walkthrough. Much of the experience is typical of browsing tools. However, it allowed us to have a conversation about log browser needs. We discovered that a major use case was to compare logs side by side. We added this feature to the release.
RESULT
We were able to apply newly created standards and guidelines to this project. We outlined and created a 1.0 feature set to help admins troubleshoot easier by making logs more accessible. We also made a point that engaging users early and often as a feature was being developed provided the opportunity for additional features and improvements to be a part of the release.