Assure Security: Monitoring and Reporting Tool

Intro

Assure Security is one of the Precisely's SaaS product which strengthens IBM i security capabilities to help security administrators establish and automate effective, comprehensive, and auditable security practices. Hence, the product is built upon IBM i 5250 terminal emulator, which requires extensive understanding of IBM I concepts, terminologies, and commands in order to operate the configurations. Launching a brand new web application could provide easy access for all-levels of users and gain a great business success for attracting new non-IBM i customers. This project will be focus on one of the features I designed and delivered, which is Assure Monitoring and Reporting (AMR) that extracts insights from IBM i journal data and delivers alerts and reports on security incidents and compliance deviations.

Methods: Custom interview, conceptual mapping, user flow, wireframes, prototyping, usability testing

My role: Lead UX designer and researcher

‍Team: 1 UX designer (me), 1 UX manager, 1 Product manager, 2 Backend engineers, 4 UI engineers, 2 QAs, 1 ID

Duration: May 2022 - Jan 2024

‍

Impact

Receive positive customer feedback on new web interfaces (MVP released!)

We have released our MVP version for one of the feature and is currently looking forward to coming-out beta version of the next feature. Customers have given us positive feedback on the significant progress on the user experience of the new web interfaces.

The design and layout is well thought out and helps make modifying rules quick and simple. - Customer

‍

‍

Business Goal

Modernize web application to increase non-IBM i customers

Building a modern web application for Assure Security not only makes it easier to access in the web world but also lower the learning barriers for non-IBM i users. Our ultimate business goal is to transform the whole product into a web application in order to make it more intuitive, easy-access and user-friendly to attract more new customers, and also explore the potential opportunities to develop new user experiences.

Reference: Learn more about the Assure Security product

‍

Target User

Security Administrators and Auditors

From the users' perspective, this feature is primarily designed for security administrators—our target users—to configure and generate reports that capture IBM i system and database activity. These reports are then sent to security auditors, who review the results, monitor security events, and identify potential issues.

‍

Pain Point

5250 interface requires technical knowledge to access

Assure Security is installed on IBM i 5250 emulator for users to access the features. For non-IBM i users, it's too difficult and technical to interact with a 5250 screen, including the following pain points:

- It requires that users have access to a 5250 emulator to access.

- Users must be familiar with commands and options in order to operate the 5250 emulator.

- Users must have an extensive understanding of IBM I users, objects, and concepts that AMR is purchased to monitor.

- Users must have an extensive understanding of AMR features, concepts, and terminologies in order to use the 5250 interface or the Windows-based console.

- AMR has complex concepts, behaviors, and terminologies, which cause confusion for users.

- AMR requires further instructions for users to understand the functionalities. However, the help document is difficult to read. Therefore, users need a lot of training and support to have the capability to operate the configurations.

‍

‍

‍

Design Process

Advocate user-centric mindsets with the team

AMR contains a variety of complex functionalities. To simplify the product concepts and fulfill the user necessities in web UI, I established and standardized the user interview and usability testing process. By conducting user research at the beginning of the project, it helped us build up a better understanding of user context and also streamline the process of defining user problems.

We released the beta version in Sep 2023 to collect initial customer feedback. We organized the feedback received from 5+ sales and external customers and prioritized them into our future planning. Implementation and validation are still continuing and our MVP is aiming to be released round May 2024. (so excited!!)

‍

‍

Research and Define

Map out current UI flows

Since the product contains a lot of technical aspects and capabilities, I started from evaluating and understanding how it currently works. I mapped out the main screens and flows for administrators and auditors to conduct the primary tasks. Besides, I highlighted the most essential steps that needs to be focused no from user perspectives. By doing so, I have a quick overview and basic understanding of this functionality, so then I can move forward to dig into the problems and pain points.

‍

Extract user insights from research

To gather the real user data and evidence, I proposed to the team to conduct user research with the following purposes:

- Collect initial feedback on the most important features and reports that our customers would like to see in the web UI.

- To understand the strengths of the current product to maintain in the web UI.

- To understand current pain points in the current product to avoid and improve in the new web UI.

I managed the research plan and partnered with Product Manager to conduct 5+ customer or sales interviews.

‍

‍

After conducting customer interviews, we discovered 3 key insights that shaped our design direction for MVP.

1. Provide built-in template reports to quickly run, view and copy in a simple list of view

Initially, our approach for the MVP was to provide administrators with the capability to create new reports from scratch. However, after conducting customer interviews, we discovered that admins rarely build reports themselves due to the time and effort involved. Instead, they prefer to request pre-built reports from sales teams and make some adjustments by copying and customizing existing templates. This valuable insight led us to shift our focus towards providing them template reports to copy and run rather than report creation from scratch.

2. Provide the capability to edit the most essential configurations for custom reports

we found that admins rarely use advanced configuration options, as the essential settings typically meet their needs. The red-highlighted areas on the screens represent the key configurations they focus on for their use cases. Presenting an overload of complex settings that they don't use can be overwhelming and may create confusion rather than adding value.

3. Provide the capability to track report run progress and results.

Lastly, running a report can take several hours depending on the volume of data, making it crucial for admins to monitor the progress and review job logs in case of errors. However, in the current design, once a report is executed, users must manually navigate through messages or job logs to track progress, which is both time-consuming and inefficient. Introducing a feature that allows admins to easily monitor the progress of multiple reports in one place would significantly enhance their workflow and efficiency.

‍

Develop UX architecture to reach consensus

After identifying the user requirements, we prioritized the features as MVP and post-MVP two categories. I analyzed the technical product concepts with Product Architect to evaluate the feasibility of the features. To accelerate the discussions with the team, I visualized the user flows, information architecture, and wireframes, so everyone could have a clear understanding of how the product would help users complete the primary tasks. I facilitated the solution definition meeting, which we went through the user requirements, UX architecture, and Product architecture sections with stakeholders to reach a consensus what we want to implement for MVP more efficiently.

‍

‍

Design

My 3 Key Design Decisions

After the solution definition was approved, I started the detailed designs under intuitive, easy-to-understand, and consistency 3 design principles. I would like to address three key designs that have shaped our reporting capabilities.

1. Transformed technical terminologies into simplified language

I conducted conceptual modeling to map out the concepts and terminologies used in 5250. This process allowed us to better understand the relationships and definitions of various technical terms. We then translated these complex terms into simplified, user-friendly language to ensure that new users could easily understand and navigate the web UI.

‍

2. Provide 20+ template reports to quickly run, view and copy in a simple list of view

Secondly, we collaborated with Professional Services to design a list of built-in template reports that are beneficial for users to generate the results directly rather than configuring the reports from scratch. Besides, they can also copy a template report, modify the definitions, and save as custom reports.

3 .Easily track the status and run results of the report

To address the need for tracking report run progress, I explored various ways to present the results effectively. Initially, I considered using pop-up dialogs or notification messages to inform users once a report run was completed. However, after consulting with technical architects, we identified several challenges with this approach. Since admins often run multiple reports simultaneously, and the completion times can vary significantly, frequent pop-ups could become disruptive. Additionally, if multiple reports finish at once, an overload of notifications could clutter the screen and hinder usability.

Instead of a proactive notification approach, I opted for a more subtle and user-friendly solution by introducing a status column in the report listing table. This column features distinct icons representing different statuses, such as run failed, run completed successfully, or no run history. For users needing more details, they can access the report details sidebar, which provides more details on run results and the corresponding job ID for further tracking within job logs.

‍

‍

Design Collaborations Across Teams

1. Developed interactive prototypes

I created interactive prototypes for the feature and demonstrated to the team, which has smoothen our design discussions and for engineers to easily understand and implement the design behaviors.

2. Contributed to design system to craft UI components

To meet with the user and product context, I collaborated with the design team to share our needs and discuss how to align with the current design system or customize the components. We have several products in Precisely; thus, it's essential to make our UIs consistent for our customers.

‍

‍

Validation

Enhance Design Hand-off Process to Engineers

1. Documented detailed design specs

I improved the design hand-off process by producing interactive prototypes to showcase the design behaviors and flows, and I also documented the design specs in the Confluence pages for further details on each component. This enhancements have smoothen the communications between designers and engineers and design hand-off process as we not only have a central guidelines to refer to but also easier to understand the other's languages.

2. Scheduled regularly design review meetings

I launched the regular design review and sync-up meetings with engineers to constantly collect feedback and align our consensus on designs. This would reduce the miscommunications and issues during the implementation phase.

3. Conducted UX validation

To ensure the implementation is consistent with the designs, I conducted UX validation on the build and logged the defects with screenshots and proposed solutions.

‍

‍

Iteration

Continuously re-evaluate and iterate the designs based on feedback, timeline, and feasibility

During the design stage, I iterated the designs based on the feedback we received from design review and beta release, and we also consider the project timeline, development resources, and technical limitations.

1. Reduced the scope of capabilities due to intense timeline

During implementation phase, the development efforts were larger than we expected, forcing us to reduce the scope of capabilities we had planned to provide for MVP in order to meet with our timeline. For instance, the Run Report dialog was supposed to provide users the flexibility to modify specific parameters for one-time event, however, we decided to only present essential and uneditable information in the dialog, including the report name and destination.

2. Received User Insights from Beta Released

Web released our beta version first with reporting listing and details capabilities to collect initial feedback from our customers, which provided us valuable insights on user needs and we iterated the designs accordingly. Originally, we were just displaying the destination name specified for the report, but when we were presenting our prototypes to the customer, he told us that it's useful to show the user list included in the destination, especially for auditors to know who will receive the report, so we switched to a dialog with accordions to show the list of user emails.

‍

‍

Reflection

Defend my Design Decisions by User Evidence

The biggest challenge for me in this project is that the product itself is very technical and there's no UX design for this product before, so I have to learn from our engineers about how it works, get myself familiar with all the technical terms, and trying to interpret them in a simple way. Since our developers are used to the logics of how they interact with the old 5250 emulator interface, they would have strong opinions on the designs, and I have to defend my design decisions through debates, user evidence, and real-world practices, showing the value and impact of UX to the team. One of the case was that we were deciding how much info to show in the web UI, the developer thought those configurations will be useful and he wants to display everything, but from user perspective, they don’t need that technical details to complete their tasks, which can even create confusion and extra work to explain it to users.

Convincing others is not easy, but sometimes it’s just people are thinking from different perspectives, for developers, they might be more concerned about the feasibility or the technical efforts it takes. Once we emphasize them like our users, it’s easier to reach a balance that we both agree on.

Lack of Customer Inputs and Data

Fortunately, we released our MVP in 2024 with positive customer feedback and responses. However, we're facing the limitations of lacking of customer data to analyze the user requirements and results throughly. We sometimes receive feedback from just one customer, and we have to determine whether to take that into consideration.

Nevertheless, I believe that the team has seen the UX value and the necessity of interacting with users directly through this project. We will continue gather inputs from our users and iterate our products (and hopefully have more customers after our MVP!).