freestyle orchestrator | vmware

 

Overview

This effort focused on redefining the VMware’s Workspace ONE platform setup and monitoring experience. Workspace ONE encompasses various technologies that help administrators manage devices, virtual machines and users. While these technologies can be tailored to address various business solutions, it is not easy for users to navigate how to do so.

  • Workflows were hard to visualize as they can span multiple feature touch-points

  • No way for users to easily gain insight into their workflow creation and performance

To simplify how customers create, monitor, and modify workflows we created an intuitive and flexible tool called the Freestyle Orchestrator. This orchestration tool serves as a guidepost for the next evolution of our product and demonstrates the strategy for the Workspace ONE platform to become a more adaptable and flexible system.

The Freestyle Orchestrator was featured in the 2020 VMworld keynote and has been promoted on the VMware EUC blog as well as a podcast on VMware’s Tech Zone.

Role: Product Design, Strategy & Vision, UI/UX Pattern Research & Creation

Tools: Sketch, Zeplin, Figma

Design explorations

To kick-off this effort I partnered with product and design leadership to identify the key concepts and primary use-cases that the next generation product experience would need to address. This exploration phase focused on re-imagining how users interact with the Workspace ONE platform through a flexible and intuitive experience that integrates with other tools.

Experiment inspired by scratch programming to use block shapes to indicate how they link together.

Initial concepts showing object relations.

In these initial designs I explored how to convey workflows in a visual format from examining how objects in the system link together to the workflow building blocks to showing branching and links between steps in a flow.

Initial design language for workflow blocks.

Exploring how objects link together based off of logic criteria set by the user.

Freestyle Vision

The exploration phase culminated in a document called the Freestyle Vision which featured a workflow visualization tool that surfaces insights to users and integrates with other products. It covered extensive use-cases from enabling users to create automation flows to surfacing insights into devices based on the configuration of a workflow. Through the course of this phase I partnered with product, design, and engineering stakeholders to craft a narrative for the “freestyle vision.” This document was used to socialize the concept with company leadership and align R&D verticals across product, engineering, and UX.

Showcasing the layout of the menu and canvas and how to inform users what to expect throughout the UI.

Highlighting the flow chart style builder branching capability and integration with other services.

Building the Freestyle Orchestrator

Once the product vision was socialized and company leadership aligned, it was time to start building the tool. It was called the Freestyle Orchestrator and I was tapped as a lead designer on the project. During this phase I partnered with fellow designers, the product management team, and a dedicated engineering team to implement this net new tool. Some of the main design challenges I tackled were outlining the interaction hierarchy, defining a visual language, and providing easy onboarding as well as post workflow creation insights to users.

Base Hierarchy

I explored various layouts to determine how best to guide users through the UI. The UI would need to allow users to see the product they are in, set the name and initial settings for the workflow, add and arrange steps in a canvas area, allow users to configure settings and publish the workflow to devices.

Visual Language

As part of creating the interface of the workflow builder I had to define a visual language that could be used across the different views. This language would need to account for the various object types and be readable across the various states of an object.

Defining multiple views

Throughout this effort it was clear the Freestyle Orchestrator needed to support multiple ways for users to visually arrange their workflows. I identified two main ways of interacting with the workflow canvas: a flow chart view and a sequential list view.

Providing Insights

Once a workflow was created, users could publish them to the devices in their organization. As part of the Freestyle Orchestrator effort, we needed to provide insights to users on how their workflows were performing and surface any issues with a given step. To meet this goal, I led the direction on how to visualize a workflow performance and surface actionable information to users.

Debuting the Freestyle Orchestrator

To showcase this new tool, VMware planned a preview during the keynote presentation of their annual conference called VMworld. I worked with company leadership to help craft the announcement and how the Freestyle Orchestrator would be introduced to customers.

 

VMworld 2020 Keynote

The Freestyle Orchestrator was announced at the VMworld 2020 conference during the opening keynote! A session featuring an in-depth product walkthrough was also available to customers.

Follow Up at vmworld 2021

An in-depth demo showcasing the live flow chart view along with expanded functionality and added features was presented at VMworld 2021!