Cohesity, San Jose
Helios, from one cluster to many
Cohesity’s product managed one on-premises cluster at a time. Helios turned it into a multi-cluster SaaS platform with global search, upgrade management and an app marketplace. I was the first designer on it, and we went from inception to launch in three months.
- Role
- Senior UX designer
- Timeline
- Jan – Oct 2018
- Team
- 4 PMs, 2 solution architects, 8 engineers
- Platform
- Multi-tenant SaaS, web
Three ideas
Helios rested on three ideas, and each one changed how administrators worked.
Multi-cluster management
Global visibility in one dashboard, management actions across clusters, operational dashboards with detailed drill-downs, and root-cause analysis.
App marketplace
Apps that run on any cluster based on its resources, and a partner ecosystem that extends Cohesity to more data and application needs.
Smart assistant
Prevent downtime, automate SLAs, run what-if analysis for planning, and get actionable recommendations from monitored assets.
How I worked
I was the only designer until a consulting firm joined for visual design. I worked directly with four product managers, two solution architects and eight engineers, which meant moving fast and making decisions visible early.
Design the right thing
Stakeholder workshops, user interviews, competitive and brand analysis, personas, MVP definition and feature priorities.
Design the thing right
Information architecture, task flows, sketching, low-fidelity wireframes, A/B tests and clickable prototypes.
Validate and ship
Functional prototypes, visual assets and a style guide, user testing and validation.
What shipped
I designed global search, multi-cluster upgrade management and the app marketplace, and redesigned the information architecture so navigation held up across many clusters.
Alongside Helios, I designed an operational analytics tool for support teams. It reduced support costs by 12% month over month and gave the team better visibility into system performance.
