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Ken Guzik

Product / Interaction DesignerUser Experience Manager

+About

User Experience Lead

User Experience Manager

Software ArchitectSystem architectureEngineering org

Building creative teamsCreating standardsSetting UE prioritiesEvangelize UE

Interaction designUser researchLook and feel

+Timeline

Much of who we are now depends on where we’ve been…

+Timeline

Xerox

Go Corp

Lexicus

Sun Microsystems

G Force

Blue Martini

VMware

UI Frameworks & Applications for Xerox Viewpoint

Xerox

Notable Events During This Time

‣ IBM PC AT Introduced

‣ Apple Macintosh Introduced

‣ Windows 1 Introduced

Xerox

What I Learned

‣ Value of Consistency

‣ Importance of Work Flow

‣ Importance of User Models

‣ Challenge of Mimicking the Real World

‣ The Risks and Rewards of Abstraction

+Timeline

Xerox

Go Corp

Lexicus

Sun Microsystems

G Force

Blue Martini

VMware

UI Frameworks & Applications for Go PenPoint

Go Corp

Go Corporation

What I Learned

‣ Adapting What I Learned at Xerox to a new Platform

‣ Different Physical Interaction Models

‣ Designing for Mobile Devices

+Timeline

Xerox

Go Corp

Lexicus

Sun Microsystems

G Force

Blue Martini

VMware

Lexicus Longhand

Lexicus

Lexicus

What I Learned

‣ Weaving New UI Models into Existing Systems

+Timeline

Xerox

Go Corp

Lexicus

Sun Microsystems

G Force

Blue Martini

VMware

NIST Grant - All Digital HDTV Broadcast Studio

What I Learned

‣ Being Productive in a Pure Research Environment

‣ Managing Across Large, Mostly Remote Teams

Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems

+Timeline

Xerox

Go Corp

Lexicus

Sun Microsystems

G Force

Blue Martini

VMware

G-Force eLearn Central

What I Learned

‣ The Challenge of Single Page Web Applications

‣ The Pitfalls of Following UI Trends

‣ The Risk of the Bleeding EdgeG Force

G-Force Systems

+Timeline

Xerox

Go Corp

Lexicus

Sun Microsystems

G Force

Blue Martini

VMware

Blue Martini Analysis Center

Blue Martini

Blue Martini Software

What I Learned

‣ Managing Large Applications Teams

‣ The Value of Selling Ideas

‣ Differences Between Technical and Consumer Applications

+Timeline

Xerox

Go Corp

Lexicus

Sun Microsystems

G Force

Blue Martini

VMware

VMware vSphere, View, Server, Go, WaveMaker

What I Learned

‣ Creating and Growing Creative Teams

‣ Design and Evolution of Enterprise Applications

‣ Nuances of Designing for Consumers

‣ Importance of Independent ThinkingVMware

VMware

+User Experience

User experience is the totality of a user’s feelings about the products they use for entertainment or to accomplish tasks

Ease to use

Easy to learn

Appropriateness of functionality

Integration into the user’s environment

Enjoyment of use

Ways in which they make the user’s life easier

+Great User Experience

Great user experience is about how the product “feels” when used

+Bad User Experience

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User Centered Design (UCD)

Put users at the forefront of all design activities

How Does Great Design Happen?

What are their problems? Product requirements Use cases

Who are the users? Personas Ethnographic studies Contextual inquiry studies

Define the user experience User models Work flows Information architecture

Refine the designs User test Prototypes User test (again)

What is the technology? Limitations / constraints

+Evolution of Design

Creation of VMware vSphere

VMware started with a vision to create a hands-off data center using virtualization

Users were conservative and risk averse IT administrators

To our users, virtualization was complex, mysterious and scary

Simply providing great technology wouldn’t cut it The product had to “feel” simple and non-

threatening

+Evolution of Design

How could VMware bring virtualization to the enterprise?

Focus on the user experience as a primary goal Make the user experience simple, familiar and

approachable Remove the “mystique” of virtualization

Make the most complex operations ridiculously simple Instill a culture of great UE across the company Hire a dedicated UX design lead (Ken)

+Initial Concepts

Single Pane of Glass

As Familiar and Comfortable UI as Possible

(Windows Explorer)

Well KnownUI Models

VMware VirtualCenter Concept Model

+Initial Concepts

Alternate VirtualCenter Concept Model

Separate Navigation From Views

Less Familiar to Windows Users

Well KnownUI Models

Multiple Windows for Increased Visibility

Rejected

+1.0 Design

Very limited functionality

VM management and Host/VM monitoring only

Simple wizard based VM deploy

Drag and drop VMMigration

Not much else

+2.0 Design

Full datacenter automation

High availability

Host load balancing (DRS)

Fault tolerance

Scale out to 1000s of VMs

Full host, VM, network and storage configuration

+3.0 Design

Continuing to build out functionality

Policy based automation

High level intelligent monitoring

Scale out to 100Ks of VMs

Integration with other mgmt UIs

+What happened to the small user?

As the product scaled out, care was taken to ensure things worked on a small scale

But…

Complexity creeps in, and the usability for the small datacenter suffers

Time to rethink the small users’ needs

Better understanding of use cases lets us consider a different product that addresses their needs

+Downsize & Simplify

Conceptual single host UI model

Supports only the most valuable use cases

Fully automated with minimal user interaction

Focus on small business needs

+Focus on Tasks

Cloud based management of local datacenter

Primarily task and wizard based UI

Integrated with community for automated recommendations

Designed for the small business use cases

Go.vmware.com

+More on VMware vSphere

Ken Guzik’s portfolio page http://kenguzik.net/portfolio/vmware/vsphere

Case study of the evolution from vSphere 1.0 to 2.0 User-Centered Design Stories, Real-World UCD Case Studies

Case 12 – User Centered Design for Middleware Publisher: http

://www.elsevierdirect.com/product.jsp?isbn=9780123706089 Chapter: http://tinyurl.com/bghzy7l

VMware vSphere product page http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/overview.html

Video tour of vSphere 4.0 http://searchvmware.techtarget.com/video/A-tour-of-VMware-vSphere-4

+Questions?

VMware product line spans ~ 60 products

Every product design has a story

Every product had unique challenges

Feel free to ask me!

Thanks