Cloud Object Storage
A one stop shop cloud solution that guides a user by showing rather than telling.
Cloud Object Storage or COS for short is a cloud based storage system where users can configure buckets that organize their stored files. Users can assign different settings or policies (such as when to archive files or how long to retain those archived files) to each of these buckets. There are many variations of buckets based on location, resiliency, and storage class. Each of these influences the speed, security and price of their data storage.
The Challenge
Based off previous research we knew that users had trouble specifically with the areas of pricing transparency, determining their cloud storage needs, and navigating outside the product to give permissions to users and other IBM cloud products.
COS was becoming a bigger and bigger product. While the business wanted to keep adding more new features there were some fundamental pain points that weren’t being addressed. So our challenge was to find a way to find a scalable solution flexible enough to accommodate the expanding features, was development friendly, and was exciting enough to get our team on board. For that we decided to create and pitch a limited concept piece.
The Scope
To keep the scope down, this concept focused solely on the Bucket Creation Flow (specifically for our admin users) which touches on all the areas we wanted to address. We created these mission statements to keep in mind in the design process:
Admins are able to learn as they go through the bucket creation process, making frictionless, informed decisions and learning by doing.
Admins are able to comprehend and provision additional services during bucket creation without leaving COS experience.
Admins are able to manage user access within COS without having to navigate through IAM.
Admins are able to comprehend and compare pricing before and after provisioning in context to make confident purchasing decisions.
What is IBM Cloud Object Storage?
Research
Current Design Assessment
Competitive Analysis
The Designs
Wireframing
High Fidelity Designs & Interactive Prototype
Key Feature Breakdown
Next Steps & Results
The Process
Research
First, I compiled a competitive analysis of our top cloud competitors, Amazon, Microsoft and Google. Given the timeframe and our goals, I focused the competitive analysis on the areas of Help Material, The Bucket Creation Flow, User Access Management, and Connected Services.
Microsoft Azure S3 Highlights
Microsoft didn’t have a great experience in the areas I was looking at. It was overall a very robust tool, but that was ultimately detrimental with an overwhelming amount of links and options without much to parse out what you need.
Google Cloud Storage Highlights
Overall, Google had very nice interactions guiding the user through bucket creation with an interactive guide with animations. They also had an interactive pricing summary with the full pricing matrix in an easily accessible side panel, where as ours is on a separate marketing page.
Amazon - AWS Highlights
Amazon’s most interesting feature was their page listing out all the different services you can configure and enable. The functionality and organization was interesting but the UI was confusing with it not being clear what is clickable and how to enable these services.
Overall Findings
No one seemed to have a flawless experience with user access management between the storage product and the platform. AWS and Microsoft Azure both had multistep bucket creation flows which differed from our product and Google’s. While not on par with Google’s interactive quick-start learning panel, we actually have nicely written and laid out help material that gives users an overview with the option to dive into detailed documentation if necessary. All of the products except for google promoted their services that you can connect with. AWS did have in-context service connections but the interactions were confusing.
Looking at the best examples from this competitive analysis, I was inspired to move forward with a multistep bucket creation flow like Microsoft, in-context learning material that walks a user through creating a bucket like Google, and clearly listing out all the services and policies that can be connected and enabled like AWS.
The Design
First got out my ideas on paper, wireframing out the major steps in the end to end flow from a user starting a free trial of COS to successful bucket creation.
The Interactive Prototype
I then moved on to creating high fidelity designs in an interactive prototype.
A main theme of this redesign is flexibility. The user can jump between steps as needed and always have the option to finish with the “Review & Create” button at the bottom of each step. The steps lend themselves to easy scalability when it comes to developing; certain pages could be released at different time based on current capabilities.
Step 1 - Basic Info
Because we already had well written and organized “Getting Started” Material, I leveraged those assets and put them in context during the bucket creation process so users wouldn’t have to navigate between the pages. As an added bonus, users can learn as they set up their first bucket.
The product would recognize if this is a new user to the IBM Cloud Platform and would direct them to the “Guided Bucket Creation Mode” automatically. If they are an expert and already know what they need, they can easily go to a single page “Standard Configuration Mode.”
We also included the pricing matrix in context that would dynamically change based on the user’s selections.
Step 2 - Additional Features
This page in particular had the biggest need for expansion. With COS adding more policies and allowing for more connected services, the tile format allowed for easy configuration and allows more room for IBM to promote their products.
Before, users would have to make a service connection request, leave COS, go to the IBM Cloud Platform, find the IAM settings and grant access, then return to COS.
Step 3 - Access
While COS doesn’t allow for any IAM (Information Access Management) set up during bucket creation, some of our competitors give limited functionality but mostly a user can’t set up all their permissions until after bucket creation. There’s seemingly no user benefit to partially setting up access permissions so here we allow all the set up during bucket creation so they can set up everything at once.
Step 4 - Review & Creation
They can then review and create their bucket having learned about what type of bucket settings suit them best, configure their policies and connected services, and grant access permissions, all while never having to leave the COS ecosystem.
Right before they hit submit, we also included a little alert reminding them that they are on the Free Lite Plan. Our users were sometimes unsure if they will be charged when they submit so we made sure to reassure them.
This concept piece was well received, successfully informed the roadmap of the product, and is currently under development.