Unified Experience
A Unified Experience across the Sumo Logic product suite
Overview
My Role
UX Lead
The Problem
Sumo Logic's offering consisted of three powerful but separate products: the Core platform, Cloud SIEM, and Cloud SOAR. This separation presented significant challenges for users who had to switch between different tools, each with its own navigation structure, look and feel, and interaction patterns. This created a jarring and often broken user journey. For the business, this fragmentation was a strategic problem, as customers and industry analysts perceived Sumo Logic as three disconnected products rather than a single, integrated platform.
The Solution
I led a strategic initiative to unify these three products into a single, cohesive platform experience. The project's goal was to harmonize the navigation, visual identity, and core interaction patterns to create a seamless experience for all users, regardless of which part of the platform they were using. This was one of the company's most critical projects, essential to its future business success.
Scope and Goals
Strategic Goals
Our primary objective was to transform the perception and reality of Sumo Logic from three separate products into one integrated platform.
We aimed to:
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Create a single, unified navigation system for the entire platform.
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Establish a consistent look and feel and a shared library of interaction patterns.
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Eliminate friction in user workflows that spanned across the different product areas.
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Solidify Sumo Logic's market position as a single, powerful, and integrated platform.
My Core Responsibilities:
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Project Leadership: I led this strategic project, working with a team of three UX designers, a visual designer, and a UX researcher.
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Cross-Functional Alignment: I worked closely with product management, engineering, and product leadership to ensure alignment on the vision, roadmap, and execution.
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Research & Design Oversight: I oversaw the entire design process, from initial user research and concept development to the final detailed designs, ensuring our solutions were grounded in user needs.
Process
1. Discovery & User Research:
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This project was heavily rooted in user research. We conducted multiple rounds of research using a variety of techniques to deeply understand user flows and use cases.
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Our methods included surveys, moderated and unmoderated usability studies of existing and proposed designs, tree-testing to validate new navigation structures, and numerous in-depth user interviews.
2. Design & Iteration:
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The insights from our research directly informed the design of a new, unified information architecture and global navigation system.
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I guided the team in creating a harmonized visual language and a set of common interaction patterns that could be applied across all product areas.
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We developed and tested multiple prototypes, iterating based on user feedback to refine the experience.
3. Collaboration & Refinement:
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I facilitated workshops and design reviews with key stakeholders from across the company to gather feedback and ensure buy-in.
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We partnered closely with engineering teams to ensure the proposed designs were technically feasible and could be implemented consistently across the different technology stacks.
Outcome
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The unified experience was successfully launched and users have been migrating to it from the classic Sumo Logic experience with growing adoption and user satisfaction.
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Post-launch continuous monitoring of user adoption and satisfaction surveys, leading to ongoing incremental improvements and refinements to the new experience.
Persona Analysis
Information Architecture
This phase involved a detailed analysis of the information architecture of three separate products, each comprising over 40 distinct pages. The primary objective was to synthesize these findings into a single, unified information architecture and a consistent navigational structure that spans all three products.
User Workflow
Sample workflow - Alert troubleshooting
workflow analysis. Sumo Logic caters to various personas with complex and varied workflows. The project involved examining the primary user workflows to create and evaluate against.
Designs
Before
After
Menu System
Main menu
Sub Menu Samples
The main menu provides quick and easy access to all pages in the application, users use for their daily workflows. Main menu items can be navigable, directing to a specific page or have a sub-menu with items for that menu category. The menu is organized by product area and use-cases.
Pinned Menu
Users can "pin" the sub-menu to keep it open, allowing quick access to sub-menu items. Menu state is persisted across sessions
Go To
The "Go To" menu provides a quick access menu, allowing users to smoothly navigate between different areas and pages throughout the product. Using keyboard shortcuts and a quick find feature makes this lightning fast.