Which button should I click on?
As a CloudForms user, do you ever get frustrated, wondering which button to click on or how to get to your selected location?
If your answer to any of these or similar questions is yes, then let me tell you that your life is going to get easier. Why does CloudForms need to be that complicated? The truth is that it doesn’t and we (with your help) are working on it. Have you already noticed any design changes in CloudForms? Has your menu changed or some reports make more sense now? Sometimes small and at first sight irrelevant changes can bring you peace of mind without you even noticing it. We are working on getting rid of all the unnecessary steps in your workflow to let you just focus on your tasks. We are eliminating painful illogical constraints, unnecessary information inputs and more, to reduce questions like which button to click on. Our job may be invisible but that means that we are doing it right.
Who are we?
We are part of the Red Hat User Experience Design team (UXD team) which is working very hard to make CloudForms and other Red Hat products more user-friendly. We are interaction designers, visual designers, user researchers, use-case architects, and front end developers from all around the world. We promote and enable a consistent user experience and are continuously working on improvements.
How do we do it?
“Design in the open”
We apply open source ideas to the design, testing, and development of products and technology solutions across our entire portfolio, not just CloudForms. We work in upstream communities, like ManageIQ, where innovation benefits from this open collaboration. We also created PatternFly, an open-source design system that provides common resources to design and build responsive, accessible user experiences.
PatternFly design system
Creating a cohesive user experience within a product as complex as CloudForms (not to mention an entire portfolio) is a major challenge. With PatternFly we can increase the consistency of the user experience in CloudForms and other Red Hat products while decreasing the time spent on UX design and front-end development.
Customer feedback
Great user experiences are never designed inside a bubble. A crucial part of the iterative design process is collaboration. Without input and feedback from our users about requirements, designs, or implementation, we would be creating in the dark. That is why transparency and collaboration with our users and engineers are key factors in creating a successful user experience.
Let’s make CloudForms better together
If you would be interested in joining us for user testing or user interviews, let us know: (https://forms.gle/xqPpyc6XUCjAWKkUA).