Wind River Studio
Wind River Studio is a cloud-native toolset for developing, deploying, operating, and servicing mission-critical intelligent systems across the edge.
My Role
Strategic Consultant, Senior Designer, Enhancement Request Coordinator: I was brought in to assist the UX team in prioritizing user needs and improving product performance.
Problem
Edge computing industry development is fragmented. Projects require a more agile and collaborative approach to accelerate progress.
Scope
Develop, deploy, and operate edge systems using the industry's first cloud SaaS/CaaS edge development platform.
Design & Stakeholder Relationships
I collaborated with heads of product, partner relationships, engineering, AI, and customer success on various features.
Major Achievements
Wind River was acquired by Fortune 200 company Aptiv for 4.3B primarily because of the innovative design and technology of its Wind River Studio software.
By The Numbers
$4.3B
Acquisition of Fortune 200 company Aptiv
50M
Dollars in revenue to convert to a new app
1st
Of this kind product in its industry
8
Designers
30+
Stakeholders Involved
Working With A New Persona
An edge developer is a specialized power user who can spend hours testing, debugging, and finding solutions to various code-related problems. The main design challenge for each feature was to visualize complex dynamic data from multiple sources, such as Github, Harbor, Jenkins, or other APIs.
User Research Studies
The Director of User Experience, the Senior UX Researcher, and I conducted a three-week study to understand our users and their varied roles.
The Visualizing The Power User
Based on data from user interviews, I created an interactive workflow diagram to represent the core user behaviors. This allowed me to simplify the user journey while preserving the complexity of the involved scenarios.
Flow Cards
This was the first attempt to consolidate every critical data point an edge developer would need into a single interface, a feature directly mandated by the CEO.
An AI-Powered Day In The Life
The framework for the dashboard cards was controlled by IA-powered variables such as time of day, last updated, and most frequently used card data, recognizing that relevant information is dynamic by nature.
A Way For Teams To Collaborate
From the start, I recognized the possibility of incorporating team collaboration into this feature. Communication becomes paramount when developers engage in mission-critical projects such as constructing an application for the Mars rover. Clear and speedy communication is achievable with clarity around code, files, documentation, and system logs.
Working With AI
While grappling with presenting only pertinent information to the users and preventing any cognitive overload, I sought help from Wind River's AI team. We devised a dynamic card system that could learn the developers' daily workflow patterns. I collaborated with them to create a model that could offer the user experience I was striving for.
Convincing The Stakeholders
It was a difficult task to persuade the stakeholders to include enough features in the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) so that it could provide some value to the user. To convince them, I presented the results of my research study for every feature that I proposed to keep in the MVP. Finally, my reasoning was persuasive enough for the stakeholders to approve all the proposed features in the final MVP design.
UX Team Process
One of the reasons I joined the UX team was to help establish a cohesive process centered around improving their product and design strategies.
Gauging The UX Organization Maturity
My first step was understanding how the organization perceives and understands UX. The results showed an uphill battle ahead.
I was attempting to integrate the current Jira planning and development team process into a user-centered approach for all UX resource allocation. We aim to ensure that all UX activities focus on enhancing the user experience.
Getting The UX Team Focused On Results
I presented and coached the UX team on affection design request management, team growth maturity, and how to show the value of proper UX to leadership. All this led to projects for tracking user behavior and prioritizing feedback within the company.
Measuring The Process
I implemented a consistent process to demonstrate the measurable impact of UX on product and business goals across the organization. By following this process, the UX team increased the understanding, value, and impact of UX within the company.
This increased company demand for Design Thinking Workshops and projects centered around analytics tracking and KPI measurement.
KPI System Design
To convene leadership on the importance of tracking user behavior, I collaborated with the product, architecture, and engineering teams to develop a platform to gather analytics for crucial user flows in the MVP.
Test Automation
This functionality was critical to completing the development pipeline workflow and ensuring the reliability of the code for building an edge system.
Who Is It For?
The product team had a misconception that needed to be addressed. They assumed only the QA testers would utilize the testing functionality by writing test cases and running regression tests. However, I helped them understand that a broader range of users could benefit from the feature. Research data indicated developers typically write and run custom test scenarios.
Key Feature
The Studio platform became the first of its kind to enable a full-edge development pipeline on the cloud by prioritizing collaboration in its feature design. This allowed multi-disciplinary teams to work on a single product in a cloud environment, showcasing the platform's true potential to clients.
CES Demo
While designing the platform, I had to consider how this revolutionary concept would be communicated using practical use cases in which the end users might find themselves. This is a CES demo I designed. Most of the features and functionality in this case study are being showcased.
The Results
Developing the first cloud platform for edge development came with its challenges. However, by understanding the user, I was able to manage the MVP scope of features like Flow Cards and Test Automation.
User Value Translated To Business Value
Users saw the product's primary value as a team collaboration and documentation platform. While increasing productivity was a benefit, collaboration within teams and documentation were the main selling points that led to a 4.3 billion dollar acquisition.
