Create Server Optimization

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All new "Create Servers" Experience

Originally, I was tasked to refresh the Rackspace Mobile App UI to align more closely with our web portal(s). When working on the current “Create Servers” flow, though, I recommended we overhaul the entire process for a more intuitive and enhanced user experience.

While not initially scoped as part of the refresh project, I wanted to challenge myself to improve the existing experience and share why this should be an important update to include in this refresh. Here is how I did that!

Expected Outcome

Increase productivity (reduce uncertainty) when adding a new server. Expand feature parity between both iOS and Android platforms.

Critique

I took screenshots of the current flow for both platforms and performed a basic heuristic evaluation on what I thought could be improved and issues that needed to be addressed. Here are some high-level problems I wanted to solve:

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Heuristic Evaluation of the current iOS and Android Interface Design.

User Interviews

With limited access to actual user interviews I revisited previous research readouts from other studies on servers. I highlighted things that I thought would be most helpful that could help guide my decisions.

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Usability Scale and Survey Results.

Conceptualizing

Now, parts of the design I thought made sense. Others just felt out-of-date. How could we make things more clear? I wanted to fix features like ‘Image Type’ that had usability issues while making others more discoverable.

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Create Flow

My first idea was to improve the process of the native experience, using a UITableViewController. However, as I iterated over the ideas and native components, it was clear I still had more concerns than confidence.

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Challenges

The native flow required too many taps and could get very deep, awfully fast. The hierarchy tree just seemed to get super complex in some areas and while most of the pieces fit, there always was one or two elements out of place.

A Table view gives the perception that selections can be made in any order when in fact, configuration works best in a more linear process.

The current flow of configuring an image is not bad. Out of date, visually? Totally! But it worked and with a few usability tweaks, could still potentially work today. So, that's why I adored the idea of using chips/tile/pills to select, customize and configure servers. However, getting the components to fit and play nicely together proved to be difficult.

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Stepper Flow

With a lot of iteration and brain storming, I explored a potential stepper flow in more detail. The idea here is, it would be more of a step-by-step process versus a customizable or table view model.

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This new direction was met with a lot of positive feedback from other focus area designers on my team. My next move was to prototype and test. Some of the feedback I gathered was:

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Lo-fidelity wireframes based on the stepper flow sketches.

Version Two

Still showing my work and gathering thoughts, ideas and suggestions. I begin shaping the interactions & visual design. Improvements made within this revision cycle included:

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Hi-fidelity mockups revised from the initial round of feedback provided.

Final Redesign Flow

After several smaller rounds of in-house usability tests and making small adjustments to the mockups & prototypes, we landed on a new refactored flow for spinning up servers on mobile devices.

Live interactive prototype recording.

While most of this project is shown for our iOS customers, I was designing for the Android team as well, in parallel. Strictly adhering to both the Human Interface and Material Design Guidelines.

Final screen deliverables for iOS.
Final screen deliverables for Android (below).

View and try out the new experience available in the app stores for iOS and Android.

Final Outcome

Delivered a user-friendly interface, aligned with user needs. A quick and intuitive process flow that adheres to the iOS Human Interface & Android Material Design Guidelines. No feature loss, as well as, fixing Bootable Volumes issue and providing customers with passwords upon creation. Fully optimized to increase the productivity of creating server activities while on the go.

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