Case study · HP · Product Design
HP User Management
Designing the beta of User Management in HP Smart’s account portal, so SMB admins get control without complexity.
Company
HP · HP Smart account portal
My role
Product Designer on a team of designers
Worked with
- Marketing
- Development
- Executive stakeholders
Scope
Beta release of User Management for SMB admins
01
Context
The product
HP Smart gives small and medium business (SMB) customers a cloud-based account portal to manage their printers, permissions, services and solutions, supplies, and users.
This case study covers the beta release of the User Management feature for SMB admins in that portal.
Design objective
Control without complexity. HP has the opportunity to disrupt the printer experience for SMB customers who want to spend less time managing printers and more time on productive work.
02
Process
Starting with research
Instead of jumping straight into solutions, our team dialed it back. We started with research and followed a traditional double-diamond process, aligning with stakeholders at every stage.
Discover
Explore and gather insights.
Define
Choose where to focus.
Develop
Conceptualize potential solutions.
Deliver
Select and deliver solutions.
- Define personas & audit the portal. We audited the existing consumer portal and found IT admins needed a more robust printer listing page.
- Sketches & IA concepts. I sketched different information architecture options for the new landing page, based on the MRD and collaboration with marketing stakeholders.
- Wireframes & UER review. Wireframes were reviewed and scoped as part of the SMB User Experience Review.
- Hi-fi prototype. I built out the visual design prototype and ran a final review with R&D, marketing, legal, and copywriting partners.
To keep everyone aligned, I joined a weekly dev meeting so developers were never surprised and could advise early, plus weekly internal design reviews and design system reviews.
03
Research
Personas
We mapped SMB customers on a spectrum from a consumer experience to a strategic, fleet-level IT experience, from SoHo owners with one printer to managed businesses with an IT printer specialist and 10+ printers.
Our personas
- Wen · SoHo
- Madison · “Jack of all trades” office manager
- Renee · Office manager
- Joe · Generalist IT admin
- Daniel · IT director
User needs
As an IT admin managing users, I want to be able to:
01
Assign permissions
So end users don’t have access to sensitive information and only see what they need to do their jobs.
02
Act in bulk
Efficiently perform bulk actions across a large number of users.
03
Review at a glance
Review user data quickly.
04
Fix and update
Address errors and update user information and permissions as needed.
Business needs
In short: design buildable products that are easy to produce and maintain.
01
Only build what we can support
Don’t create so many features that maintenance becomes impossible or too time-consuming.
02
Use the design system
Reduce development effort and bring consistency across HP’s digital products.
03
Reduce help calls
Create a simple, efficient experience.
04
Drive engagement
Encourage users to engage with the platform.
04
Design & iteration
Wireframes
Challenge: business scope
Timeline, business needs, and resource availability meant we had to scale back launch features into a simplified MVP.
V1 prototype
A bulk action bar with contextual menus, and an invite-users modal.
Challenge 1: design system constraints
The requirements asked us to solve problems our design system had no patterns for, so I worked with the design system team to build a solution.
V2 prototype
A bulk action bar with action and confirmation modals, and inviting users inline.
Challenge 2: ECP alignment
We aligned with ECP patterns: a bottom-anchored bulk action bar with a dropdown menu, and inviting users inline with tabs.
V3 prototype
A bottom-anchored bulk action bar with a contextual menu, plus inviting users inline with tabs and by CSV upload.
Challenge 3: information architecture
V4: final prototype
A bottom-anchored bulk action bar with a contextual menu, and inviting users inline.