Application Mobility Services
Challenge
As more and more large enterprises' data storage grew rapidly in cloud, managing data in hybrid environment can be complex and challenging. As part of that, just moving data from on-premise to cloud is not as easy as it seems. We need a simplified solution to help customer transition smoothly from on-premise to cloud.
Solution
Designed a brand new product from 0 to 1. This migration solution helps IT teams move their data quickly and setup resiliency easily. The entire product experience includes onboarding, managing data centers, discovering applications, migrating applications, monitoring migration progress and details, as well as user management.
Role & Team
Lead Designer, collaborated with Product Management, Engineering, UX Research, and Infodev (Technical content writer)
Outcome
Launched Veritas Application Mobility Service in July 2023, significantly boosted data migration efficiency.
Earned the "WOW" Award from Engineering and Product Management.
Influenced product strategy, with the next phase focusing on adding deployment capability and integrating the product into the Veritas' flagship Alta platform.
A snapshot of the dashboard
Context
Veritas’ InfoScale has been providing on-premise high availability IT solutions to enterprises for the past decades. As more and more existing customers move their data to the cloud, more resiliency and security are needed to protect their data on the cloud with zero downtime, especially when disaster happens. We want to ensure that customers' business critical applications are intact and highly available. This is a way to continue building customer loyalty and trust. The goal was to help existing InfoScale customers in their transition from on-prem to cloud in a way that is less complicated.
Understand users' needs and pains
Since expanding business in the cloud was part of the company's overall strategy, market research on cloud had already been done before I started working on this project. I read through all the documentations and spoke with product manager to understand further in detail. After synthesizing all the information, I found out a few major user pain points and needs:
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The current migration process is very manual.
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Most of the migration tools today only look at virtual machine or instance level, they don’t look at application levels. Misconfiguration happens on application level. They don’t help companies understand their application dependencies.
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IT teams want to be able to manage data across multiple cloud platforms.They don’t want to be tied to a specific cloud provider.
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IT teams lack the cloud management skillsets and industry standard knowledge.
How Might We
How might we make the migration process easier?
How might we help reduce the knowledge gap?
How might we help users find out the application dependencies?
How might we allow users manage and migrate data among different cloud providers?
Ideation process
In order to resolve customers' needs and wants, I proposed some product concepts through rapid prototyping. After that, I initiated and led several rounds of discussions with stakeholders. During the process, I had gained more insights and ideas to iterate further.
Solution 1: Guided migration
Having step-by-step guidance and relevant information along the migration process can empower users and boost their confidence for completing the task.
Solution 2: Monitor migration
After IT teams start migrating data from on-prem to cloud, the progress can take a long time. Being able to monitor overall progress has become crucial. Visualizing data mobility activities on dashboard helps users stay on top of all the migration tasks and identify any failures as soon as possible. Now users can keep track of all migration activities in one place rather than different places (via different cloud providers). It reduces the needs for expert knowledge of different cloud knowledge and skillsets.
Design process - starting with exploration
As soon as I have identified the most important information to show on the dashboard, I started thinking about different types of visualizations that can best represent those data. As part of the initial design exploration, I had done research on existing Veritas products, competitors' products, as well as all other domains that are not the tech field (such as human migration map).
Design process - initial concepts with a focus on map interaction
Although most of the data could be represented by standard charts such as bar chart, donut or line chart, I thought that it was missing the "WOW" factor in the product, so a map view with migration activities could be a way to have that effect, which is important for a new product. Since there is no map component in the design system, I created concepts to illustrate the map interactions and visualizations. It concept was accepted by stakeholders.
Solution 3: Application dependencies
A clear view showing application dependencies by default provides better visibility. If users forget to select other applications within the same cluster, a reminder will show up. It helps users make more accurate decision when moving applications.
User Testing
During the design process, I initiated 2 rounds of user testing. I worked with a UX researcher to plan and conduct research sessions. First round was testing low-fidelity prototypes with 6 internal research participants who are familiar with cloud migration. The goal was to get initial feedback on the design to ensure that nothing was too offtrack. The second round was high-fidelity interactive prototypes with 5 external participants. The goal was not only to test the workflows and usability, but also to understand customers’ functional, technical and organization needs and expectations.
While feedback from customers was generally positive, there are still areas for design improvement. I’ve worked with the UX researcher, PM and Engineers to prioritize those items for improvement. Due to time-constraints, we’ve decided to incorporate the “low-hanging fruits” first:
1. Update confusing terminologies
2. Show all data centers in one location
Final Deliverables
After 4 months of thorough design, I had delivered an entire product experience which includes all workflows in datacenter management, application discovery and management, migration plan management, dashboard, user management, onboarding and navigation. After engineering had implemented the design, I conducted UX readiness review with the goal of identifying any UX related bugs before the product went out to the customers.
Here are some key screens of the workflows that I delivered:
Outcome
Application Mobility Services was released in July 2023. It significantly reduced challenges that customers had been facing in the past.
Map design was used in Alta cloud platform, a flagship product at Veritas.
Received "WOW" award for product innovation.
Influenced product strategy, with the next phase focusing on adding deployment capability and integrating the product into the Veritas' flagship Alta platform. I continue leading the this effort.