Introduction

The multi-cloud monitoring application empowers users to monitor and manage their cloud environments across platforms. The Topology View is a core feature, offering a hierarchical visualization of cloud resources, including Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs), environments, product architectures (monolith or microservices), and specific services like EC2 Explorer, Clusters, and WAF

This redesign aims to enhance usability, clarity, and scalability, enabling users to effectively navigate and manage their multi-cloud ecosystems with a seamless experience

Problem Statement

The Challenge:

Users find it challenging to understand and navigate their complex multi-cloud architectures. The current Topology View lacks clarity in resource relationships, creating inefficiencies in monitoring and managing cloud services.Key Issues:

Key Issues:

1. Complex Hierarchies: Multi-cloud environments include numerous resources (VPCs, services, architectures) that need intuitive representation.

2. Scalability Challenges: Existing designs fail to effectively visualize large-scale systems with multiple environments and services.

3. Limited Interactivity: Users need interactive tools to drill down into specific resources (e.g., EC2 instances, clusters) for detailed insights.

4. Information Overload: Overwhelming amounts of data are displayed without prioritization, making it hard to focus on critical details.

My Role

I'm the lead product designer for this project. I collaborated with product designers (Rafi,Hyder and product managers (Siddesh Mahesh Dekhmush) throughout this project

Goals

Business Goals

• Improve the usability and efficiency of the Topology View to retain and attract enterprise users.

• Enhance scalability to support monitoring of increasingly large and complex multi-cloud infrastructures

• Reduce troubleshooting time by enabling users to quickly identify and manage resources

User Goals

• Visualize relationships between resources (VPCs, environments, services) clearly and intuitively.

• Quickly locate and interact with specific services, such as EC2 Explorer or WAF, for actionable insights.

• Manage and monitor multi-cloud resources in real time without feeling overwhelmed by the interface.

Impact

Enhanced User Experience:

• Users can now visualize complex multi-cloud architectures with ease, reducing cognitive load and navigation time.

• The hierarchical view provides clarity on resource relationships, improving decision-making.

Increased Efficiency:

• Scalability improvements allow users to manage large environments effortlessly, boosting operational efficiency.

• Interactive elements streamline tasks like troubleshooting and monitoring specific services.

Customer Retention:

• Positive feedback from usability testing indicates a significant improvement in user satisfaction, increasing the likelihood of retention and adoption.

Scalability Achieved:

• The slot-based visualization system allows for seamless scaling, enabling users to track thousands of resources without clutter.

Design Process

Research & Insights:

• User Interviews:  Engaged with DevOps engineers, cloud architects, and IT administrators to understand pain points and expectations for topology visualization.Key Feedback: Need for clarity in resource relationships and the ability to interact with specific components directly.

• Competitive Analysis: Studied multi-cloud monitoring tools to identify best practices in topology visualization and interactivity.

• Usage Data: Analyzed usage patterns of the existing Topology View to identify frequently accessed components and common navigation flows.