LevelBlue Cybersecurity
Leading great experiences in Cybersecurity.
Overview
While Head of UX, I was tasked with redesigning our flagship SIEM platform while integrating the suite of cybersecurity products into a single pane of glass. The team identified information architecture deficiencies, an outdated UI framework, user workflow improvements, unaddressed feature requests and incident reporting improvements. During my tenure, I built and mentored a high-performing, multi-disciplined team of designers — fostering a culture of collaboration, autonomy, and innovation. I introduced agile workflows to align design with product roadmaps, improving visibility and delivery forecast. I led and taught the adoption of AI tooling in our workflows, while showing how to keep token costs within budget. I developed and taught user research practices grounded in Human Factors International principles to ensure intuitive and user-centered solutions were being shipped.
Due to NDA restrictions, detailed work is available during live presentation.
Analysis
Research with security teams and customers highlighted unaddressed feature requests and unseen improvements for our products. Strategic interactions with product, sales and support placed design improvements on company roadmaps. Close collaboration with engineering fostered a transparent understanding of technical limitations and a productive rapport to reduce tech debt and prioritize UX in product development.
Solutions
After considering user feedback, through surveys, interviews and contextual inquires, product requirements, and technical limitations, I created a path for the team to achieve a list of UX outcomes. Basing the outcomes on improving the experiences for operations teams and customers, the highest priority outcomes were:
- Reducing analysts' time on task
- Reduced cognitive load during threat queries, identification and mitigation
- Increasing velocity for investigation and reporting workflows
- Improving team shift handoffs
- Providing inclusive internal communications
- Making dashboards more intuitive to create and read
Major features like an AI assistant, a UI framework shift to Material Design, inclusive team messaging, SOAR and generative AI tools for investigations and incident reports were features identified to improve UX metrics.
AI Assistance
Leveraging an LLM and a UI agent, we were able to provide value for analysts throughout their day-to-day workflow. From a powerful natural language search and filter assistant, to a generative reporting tool, and customizable role creations — users were delighted to decrease the time of usual tasks by more than half.
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Modernizing the Design System and UX Behaviors
The main platform when I came onboard used an older UI framework from Bootstrap. After negotiating with engineering, all teams agreed to implement Material UI for Angular. The design system update improved the aesthetics and added useful components with additional interactions for users. We also kept UX patterns consistent so users found system behaviors cohesive and expected. The updated data visualizations also yielded positive feedback from analysts and customers.
Inclusive team messaging
Communication within operations teams is paramount. Analysts, managers and customers relied on peripheral applications to communicate to each other. To reduce extraneous cognitive load, we designed a messaging and notification center in the platform. This also improved team shift handoffs. Users could tag individuals or teams in notes to raise concerns and get guidance for alarms, events or investigations.
Implementing SOAR
From concept to implementation, I guided the design work for SOAR technologies into the platform with product and engineering. We worked with subject matter experts and operations teams to solve for complex requirements such as action automations, rule association and plugin actions. The implemented design utilized a linear playbook interface that broke each step into a card that users could easily customize and add to the automation.
UX Outcomes and Increased Design Maturity
The team achieved 10 major UX outcomes across a suite of products. We created strong confidence in the UX team by showing the ROI with user research and testing. We evangelized user-centered design thinking and negotiated for best design decisions while meeting business requirements. Through our efforts, we increased design maturity across product and engineering teams.