2019 - 2022

Fungible Data Center

Flexible and efficient data centers through the composable cloud

My Roles

UX Director

I led the Fungible UX team that launched and evolved the Fungible Data Center solution through experience-first product development.

Product Strategist

I identified gaps, opportunities, and tradeoffs, guiding decision-makers through product definition and problem alignment.

User Researcher

I learned about our product domain and interviewed users to improve the product experience.

People Manager

I managed a remote UX team and coached recent graduates into T-shaped senior designers.

Project Manager

I managed UX projects and improved collaboration with engineering through a design-led design system launch.

Lead Designer

I built trust with new executives and helped secure an acquisition by simplifying concepts and workflows.

My Approaches

Wallace & Gromit: The Wrong Trousers (Train Chase Scene)

You learn something general by studying something specific.

— Stephen Kuffler "Father of Modern Neuroscience"

Outline

01

Situation

  1. A new paradigm

  2. Our goal

  3. Our tasks

02

Challenges

03

Outcomes

Paradigm

Composable Cloud

Composable cloud is a software-defined infrastructure approach that enables dynamic allocation and reconfiguration of computing resources.

Why this approach

In traditional data centers, resources are siloed and require experts to manage. While virtualization brought flexibility, it came at the expense of performance. Using composable cloud technology invented by Fungible, the Fungible Data Center combines the flexibility of virtualization with bare metal performance, enabling truly efficient and cost-effective data centers.

Siloed resources require experts to manage.

Some workloads (e.g., AI/ML) require bare metal performance.

Inflexibility leads to underutilized resources and energy/cost inefficiencies.

Goal

Bring technology and workflows together

Fungible invented the DPU, a technology that enables bare metal hardware performance over the network.

Cloudistics developed a platform that connects servers, storage, and virtual networks, simplifying private cloud management workflows.

Tasks

Vision to Launch, UX-First

Executives handed off a 5-page vision document to the UX team.

Product Brief:

  • Turn product vision into a product launch

  • Deliver 4 working prototypes before Fungible acquires Cloudistics

  • Support bare metal workloads instead of virtualization workloads

  • Support the composition of physical and virtual resources instead of all virtual objects

Outline

01

Situation

  1. A new paradigm

  2. Our goal

  3. Our tasks

02

Challenges

  1. Launch a design system

  2. Build consensus on problems and solutions

  3. Make time for user research

03

Outcomes

Challenge 1:

Launch a design system

Design System

Bridging the design-code gap

I orchestrated the launch of our design system.

Components - Our design team updated our Sketch design library to adhere to Material Design Guidelines and adopted Angular Material Components.

Design Tokens - Our design team documented our design decisions through design tokens and brought the tokens into the front-end code.

Sticker Sheet - Our design team delivered to the front-end team a sticker sheet of styled Angular Material Component using our design tokens.

Design System

Change Management

I coordinated across departments, managed expectations, resolved conflicts, and ensured the quality of our work.

Our investment paid off with dividends. We improved our UI consistency and our efficiency working with the front-end team. This increased efficiency allowed us to complete additional projects that benefited design operations and our product roadmap.

Design System

Filling the Gaps

Due to a staffing shortage, I took over ownership of the networking feature of Fungible Data Center while the design system project was in progress.

I added extensive functionality and delivered the design specifications to the cross-functional engineering pod.

I filed tickets to fix breakdowns in communication and ensured that the intended design was implemented.

My hands-on work allowed us to launch version 1 of Fungible Data Center with a design system.

An overview of the flows delivered to the Networking pod. The flows highlighted in yellow existed when ownership of the project passed to me. I added the rest of the functionality. Other color-coding provided an overview of the state of a build under review.

The underlay network list before I owned the networking feature.

The underlay network list before I owned the networking feature.

In this iteration, I added the concept of VRFs and CIDR blocks after discussions with our networking engineer.

In this iteration, I added the concept of VRFs and CIDR blocks after discussions with our networking engineer.

In this iteration, I added network suspend and resume functionality. The network suspension feature was moved to the backlog.

In this iteration, I added network suspend and resume functionality. The network suspension feature was moved to the backlog.

In this released iteration, I added actions needed to manage the VRF and CIDR block concepts.

In this released iteration, I added actions needed to manage the VRF and CIDR block concepts.

The virtual network properties before I owned the networking feature.

The virtual network properties before I owned the networking feature.

The underlay network properties before I owned the networking feature.

The underlay network properties before I owned the networking feature.

I added the network assignment flow.

I added the network assignment flow.

I standardized the network properties page layout.

I standardized the network properties page layout.

The network creation form before I own the networking feature.

The network creation form before I own the networking feature.

I switched the network creation form from a modal to a page.

I switched the network creation form from a modal to a page.

Challenge 2:

Building consensus on the problems and solutions

Problem & Solution Alignment

Modeling Journeys

I create alignment diagrams to provide a comprehensive view of the user experience in the problem space and the solution space.

A customer journey map for Fungible Data Center

A customer journey map for Fungible Data Center

A workflow diagram encompassing Fungible's B2B and B2B2B relationships

A workflow diagram encompassing Fungible's B2B and B2B2B relationships

A process flow diagram for dashboard widgets

A process flow diagram for dashboard widgets

A simple diagram comparing the physical experience before the Fungible Data Center (FDC) and the flexible solutions the FDC provides with software-defined architecture

A simple diagram comparing the physical experience before the Fungible Data Center (FDC) and the flexible solutions the FDC provides with software-defined architecture

Modeling Architecture

I created diagrams to clarify how concepts, activities, and content are connected in Fungible Data Center (FDC).

FDC 4.0 Concept Map

FDC 4.0 Concept Map

FDC 4.0 Sitemap

FDC 4.0 Sitemap

A diagram mapping page layouts in FDC

A diagram mapping page layouts in FDC

A state diagram with states in swimlanes and FDC objects in rows

A state diagram with states in swimlanes and FDC objects in rows

A diagram presenting FDC concepts with resource allocation examples

A diagram presenting FDC concepts with resource allocation examples

Problem Alignment

Building Consensus on the Problems

Human-centered design involves empathizing with people’s situations and guiding them through the least frustrating and most motivating path toward their goals.

Shipping human-centered products involves connecting empathy to business objectives. I build consensus by making these connections clear.

I currently use job stories to make this connection. They are simple, portable, and complete.

Solution Alignment

Reframing the Solution

Between internal releases 2 and 3, the executives challenged me to improve the clarity of our novel concepts. I accomplished this by changing our conceptual metaphor, simplifying the workflow without reducing functionality. We were fortunate to simplify these concepts early. Making such a change after the product launched would have been resource-intensive.

Challenge 3:

Making time for user research

Understanding Users

  • Domain Knowledge documentation

    Domain Knowledge

    I took IT support courses from IBM and Google to understand important objects and concepts in the IT administration domain.

    View 🔒
  • User Interviews documentation

    User Interviews

    I interviewed internal and external users to find and fix pain points in earlier product releases.

    View 🔒
  • Research Findings documentation

    Research Findings

    From user research, I generated recommendations to improve our events and notifications features.

    View 🔒
  • Cognitive Diversity documentation

    Cognitive Diversity

    I collected information on cognitive diversity—I believe we need to understand the diverse ways in which people perceive, think, and approach problem-solving.

    View 🔒

Outline

01

Situation

  1. A new paradigm

  2. Our goal

  3. Our tasks

02

Challenges

  1. Launch a design system

  2. Build consensus on problems and solutions

  3. Make time for user research

03

Outcomes

  1. Results

  2. Lessons

  3. Platform Evolution

Results

  • Simplified concepts and flows in Composable Cloud

  • Met acquisition requirements and deadlines

  • Turned product vision into product launch

  • Delivered a design system, improving efficiency

  • Completed additional projects not on the roadmap

Microsoft acquired Fungible in January 2023. 🎉

Lessons

Complete the cycle – Eventually, physical resources die, and users need to recover gracefully. The breakdown of dependencies across different layers of abstraction compounded this challenge. Working through these failure cases took considerable effort and highlighted the importance of thoroughly reviewing the complete user flow.

Check all perspectives – We needed to review the product from at least eight different perspectives. Studying the four stages corresponding to our UI sections—monitoring, allocation, composition, and templating— was straightforward. Still, we needed to surface the unique life cycle of each of the four resources. We generated many flows to reach the correct view angle for all resources and improved the user experience within these flows. This effort highlighted the importance of viewing the user’s journey from multiple dimensions.

Platform Evolution

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Fungible Data Center on a laptop

Walkthrough

Fungible Data Center:

  • Workflows built on top of DPU-enabled hardware

  • Independent scaling of servers, storage, GPUs, and virtual networks

  • Allocation of resources to multiple tenants

  • Software-defined “composed servers” for different workload needs

  • Customizable templates for scaling workloads

  • Modular management portal to fit different customer needs

Data center administrators can monitor activities related to the resources in their system.

Data center administrators can monitor activities related to the resources in their system.

Storage capacities from physical devices are aggregated into a pool. Administrators can monitor these storage devices.

Storage capacities from physical devices are aggregated into a pool. Administrators can monitor these storage devices.

GPUs stored in separate chassis can be "composed" with physical servers.

GPUs stored in separate chassis can be "composed" with physical servers.

Servers can be "composed" with storage, GPU, and networking resources.

Servers can be "composed" with storage, GPU, and networking resources.

Resources can be assigned to different tenants, each with its own management portal.

Resources can be assigned to different tenants, each with its own management portal.

In a tenant, users can deploy preconfigured environments with one click.

In a tenant, users can deploy preconfigured environments with one click.

Users can create a custom environment with different types of composed servers that are easily scaled.

Users can create a custom environment with different types of composed servers that are easily scaled.

Once a composed server "instance" is created, physical resources can be swapped out without destroying a workload-specific composition. This feature allows for resource oversubscription.

Once a composed server "instance" is created, physical resources can be swapped out without destroying a workload-specific composition. This feature allows for resource oversubscription.

Tenant administrators can monitor resources and activities related to their environments and composed servers.

Tenant administrators can monitor resources and activities related to their environments and composed servers.

Users are guided through the decomposition process and error cases.

Users are guided through the decomposition process and error cases.

Administrators can create and manage virtual networks assigned to different tenants.

Administrators can create and manage virtual networks assigned to different tenants.