Case study summary

Challenge

During one of CrowdStrike’s high-growth phases in 2021, I led the simplification of a dashboard configuration feature.

The feature was a customizable widget that allowed customers to specify the data visualization type–a chart, graph, or diagram–to use in their dashboard, making the dashboards more meaningful and valuable than the default widgets that came with pre-defined data visualizations. This feature was technically challenging because the data visualizations were created dynamically on data that was filtered dynamically. Because the focus was on meeting technical challenges, less time was spent on design than on engineering. Unfortunately, this led to the feature going live without any design input. The language and the content flow in the feature were confusing, and customers struggled to use the new feature.

Approach

To address the customer confusion, I led a series of iterative meetings with the engineer in order to improve the usability.

First, I became familiar with the feature by using it on a sandbox and then talking with the engineer about the expected user behavior. Next, I studied the feedback users had provided, which was very specific about which parts of the language and flow they found confusing. Drawing some conclusions from all this, I created a mockup with a few options for updating the menu layout and language, and I began iterating on these ideas with the engineer. At that time, there was no UX designer assigned to the project, so the engineer and I developed the solution that we believed would be easier for customers to adopt.

Outcome

The new design that I co-created with the engineer was implemented about 2 weeks after receiving the customer feedback.

A new round of customer feedback was gathered a month or so later, and we learned that customers were no longer struggling to create the new customizable widgets on their dashboards.

Impact

The results of my efforts on this project were immediate and far-reaching.

The ease of creating customizable widgets on dashboards is still a highly desirable feature for security experts using CrowdStrike’s products.

You can see this new design featured in a recent CrowdStrike blog post:

Endpoint Security – Customized Dashboards, May 2, 2024 (3:30 in video)

Role

Lead UX Writer

Impact

Security experts using CrowdStrike can easily create customized widgets on their dashboards.

Outcome

Customers stopped struggling when creating custom widgets.

Workshops

Multiple brainstorming sessions in Miro

Focus areas

Content design

Menu layout

Result

A simplified version of the custom widget feature was delivered within a few weeks of receiving the negative customer feedback.