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Designing a new better experience to foster server assignment of a Cloud computing service

BareMetal-as-a-Service (BMaaS) is one of the products on One Cloud Platform. Currently One Cloud platform is a private cloud offering services as

Google Cloud, Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure.

 

Designing an experience for the BMaaS server request to customers and

server assignment experience to the One Cloud business team.

To comply with my non-disclosure agreement, I have omitted and obfuscated confidential

information in this case study. All information in this case study is my own and

does not necessarily reflect the views of Rakuten.

The Challenges

Customer

  • Customer is forecasted BareMetal Server (BMaaS) on forecasting season of every year end of Aug to Dec. 

  • Again they need to request server on Jira application by checking the forecasted data manually on Excel sheet/third party app. 

  • After the server request, customers need to communicate by chat, email or phone call with the BMaaS business team Technical Account Manager (TAM team) about the server request to approve. 

  • Customers need to keep track of chat, email and Jira apps. 

  • Overall 2 weeks time is taken to get the servers to customers. 

 

Business/Technology 

  • BareMetal service was on boarded early with One Cloud with lack of customer experience . 

  • Due to lack of resources for BMaaS technical API cannot change. 

  • One Cloud TAM team is getting requests for many services by Jira, email, and chat applications. 

  • The TAM team needs to investigate every BMaaS server request about Forecast, business impact, and service cost change. 

  • The TAM team is manually finding the available servers on third party applications to assign requested servers to customers.

The Outcome

Designed a better experience for current One Cloud platform customers. Due to this new solution, around 30% service providers adopted and around 10% new service providers migrated their products into One Cloud.

 

Customer

The 2 weeks customer journey of server request and server assignment is designed on two methods:

  1. Instant server assignment: customers can see the available BMaaS servers on One Cloud and can assign themself in a minute.

  2. Seamless experience for server request: if server is not available on the new BMaaS pool, simply selecting few information customers can request servers, easily track, communicate and can see server assignment status within One Cloud platform in 1to 3 days maximum. 

 

One Cloud TAM Team

One-click server assignment: One Cloud business TAM team members can easily see the investigation details on a single screen and assign requested servers by one-click in One Cloud platform. 

My Role

I was responsible for server request and assignment experience discovery, strategy, design of the prototypes and testing the prototypes with stakeholders and customers. 

 

Already ongoing 

  • Implemented a design process. This has helped our team establish more structure to how we conduct our work and allow other teams to gain visibility across our upcoming sprints. Continuously improving the design process.

  • Designed a new design-system. This has helped the entire ecosystem including Design, Product, Engineering and QA teams to understand why and how we choose to implement certain components and consistent customer experience.

  • Establishing a design checklist. This has helped to focus on quality and maintain consistent design across different parts of the platform.  


Discovery 

Discovered with following people from context to deliver the agreed design solutions.

One Cloud business stakeholders: 3

One Cloud technical stakeholders: 7

BMaaS business stakeholders: 5

Primary customers: 5 customers group with 10 people 

Secondary customers: 8 customer group with 16 people 


Experience Strategy & Vision

Discovered customer problems, and business process of server procurement and proposed strategy to make changes in business process to empower One Cloud customers.

 

Design & Validation

Research, Interviewing stakeholders and customers, synthesis data, prototyping, usability testing and collaborating with multidisciplinary teams. I worked alongside a UX intern, prototype designer who converted as designer from UI developer by design training. 

 

Planning & Scope Definition

I partnered with one product owner and project manager to uncover insights and translate concepts into features that address customer needs.

 

Leadership

I designed and presented works to gain buy‐in from executives, senior stakeholders and many other internal teams throughout the project lifecycle. Mentoring empathy and design thinking for new design interns and prototype designers. Sharing success stories to other departments to inspire the change by design.

The Approach

Design Thinking (nonlinear approach)

Empathise with people

Know the people we are designing for, so we understand their needs better.

​

Define a challenge

Decide on who we want to design for and what we want to help them do.

​

Generate ideas

Come up with different solutions that might be useful to people.

​

Prototype your design

Create a user flow and turn your ideas into interactive mockups.

​

Test to learn

Take our prototypes to people and get feedback to continue to learn about people.

​

Share the story

Craft a human story to inspire others toward action.

Focusing on Goal

Redesign discovery was to improve better customer and business user experience for server requests and assignment journeys with technical API challenges. Focused  to build apps that are useful, usable and meaningful to the targeted users. We were thrilled by the opportunity to create something meaningful.

The Discovery

Customer Journey Map (Server request & server assignment)

The map highlighted how broken the server request and server assignment journey was and created a deeper empathy amongst. This research allowed us to focus our energy on creating the right experience.

The Framework

Server Request & Assignment Value Streaming Map

Reducing or eliminating waste can improve BMaaS server request and server assignment bottom line. As a bonus, discover the root cause and the source of the waste.

 

Once wasteful handoffs are identified as part of Value Stream Mapping, our teams can consciously improve behaviour, culture, communication, and collaboration.

Design

For the current MVP on the existing table, added available servers from the pool and enhanced visually. 

00.png

Selected two pooled servers for instant self server assignment

A01.png

Self server assignment

A02.png

Success: Self server assignment

A03.png

Server request, when pooled server is not available. User can navigate from landing screen > server request button (back in the screen)

02.png

Success of server request

04.png

After server request workflow ticket created - if required, customer communication with One Cloud business team TAM team members

05.png

Workflow server request ticket approval

06.png

Persona: One Cloud business - TAM Team Members

TAM team members can see the requested server details, verify the automatically pre-selected pooled servers to assign

Success: TAM team member server assignment

08.png

Refinement

First we aligned with technical and business stakeholders with design solutions.

 

Usability testing was done with customers(13 groups with 26 people) and discovered the following insights with the prototype and aligned with BMaaS and One Cloud business and technical stakeholders. 

 

Refinement Insights:

  • Nice to have an approval diagram to see the up-to-date status.

  • From One Cloud ticket system, link to BMaaS product landing page where customers can see the assigned servers.

  • One page interface to TAM team members for server assignment instead of two pages.

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