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Client: Dell Software (Now Quest Software)
Role: Design Research (Co-owner of Design for Project) Product: Foglight for Virtualization |
Project: Researching alternate ways to display the capacity, health and categories of objects of a virtualized environment.
Results: A concept was designed, tested and patent application was initiated, but due to changes in business direction the project was terminated.
Results: A concept was designed, tested and patent application was initiated, but due to changes in business direction the project was terminated.
Identifying the ProblemAt the time the Capacity Director screen could only view individual branches in a table format. This sufficed if the admin knew what they were looking for, but was not optimized for active management.
Another designer and I were tasked with researching different ways to visualize a system of Clusters, ESX Hosts (for VMware, equivalent for other hypervisors), Virtual Machines, Virtual Centers, Resource Pools and Datastores. |
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Defining Use Cases
Using our existing four personas for Foglight, we created some hypothetical use cases based on the customer feedback that prompted this project:
1.) Identify + mitigate problems – “This section will die, how can I prevent this.”
2.) Plan upgrades – “We just got a hardware budget increase, what are the possibilities?”
3.) Experiment with current setup – “I wonder if there are any opportunities to move things around to make things run more smoothly.”
1.) Identify + mitigate problems – “This section will die, how can I prevent this.”
2.) Plan upgrades – “We just got a hardware budget increase, what are the possibilities?”
3.) Experiment with current setup – “I wonder if there are any opportunities to move things around to make things run more smoothly.”
Preliminary ResearchWeeks were spent researching different ways to visually display large (1000+ item) hierarchical data that fit in line with our proposed use cases.
Through examining a variety of options, the most efficient and common way to visually show hierarchies is through a tree diagram - similar to a Dendrogram. However when the number of children get too high (the case with 1000s of VMs) the detail is lost on the last layers. |
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Through representing the same data with a Sunburst(SB) we reduce this as the large outer layers are wrapped around the circle, granting more area for details. The drawback with using a circular design is the inevitable waste of corner space that is hard to estimate (varies with data) and estimation inaccuracy from distortion (similar to pie-charts).
The suggestion is to move to a half-circle design that still captures the spatial advantages of a circle combined with a flat bottom portion that allows users to "drill down" on the information. With the flat bottom of the half-circle design, the "drill down" can utilize layers of what is known as an Icicle diagram which is simply a sunburst transformed from polar to cartesian coordinates for better spatial visualization. |
Prototyping
Rough prototypes were pieced together with components of existing screens and compared to a flow diagram I made at the beginning of the project.
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Initial Research
Recruiting internal test participants was relatively easy at Dell as the company had many employees in system management roles. Because we used internal volunteers sourced through a voluntary internal program, we were able to move faster by bypassing legal and compensation approval for sourcing test participants. Our first tests were done in-person with two IT admins in the downtown Toronto office with 4 more tests conducted remotely.
Volunteers were asked to run through task-based scenarios that were based off of the use cases identified earlier. After the test, a simple Likert scale questionnaire was used to collect details on the efficacy and usability of the proposed designs.
Volunteers were asked to run through task-based scenarios that were based off of the use cases identified earlier. After the test, a simple Likert scale questionnaire was used to collect details on the efficacy and usability of the proposed designs.
Follow-Up
Collected feedback was disseminated, documented in Confluence and used to further develop the different interactions and flows of the proposed design.
A patent application was started, entitled "System and method for intuitively visualizing and managing capacity in virtualized environments, to allow for easy identification, selection, and remediation of problem areas."
Unfortunately, the company changed business owners and therefore the project was dropped to pursue other strategic initiatives.
A patent application was started, entitled "System and method for intuitively visualizing and managing capacity in virtualized environments, to allow for easy identification, selection, and remediation of problem areas."
Unfortunately, the company changed business owners and therefore the project was dropped to pursue other strategic initiatives.
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