Cost and Asset Management
Digital Prodcut Design
As part of the IBM Multi-Cloud Management Platform, our team was tasked to build a product that would allow IT departments and finance teams to optimize their public and private cloud spend. The solution enables the user to automatically discover their costs and utilization, and build policy and analytics to optimize their infrastructure and application deployments. Simply put, you can ensure that you deliver high-quality services at the lowest possible price.
CREDITS
Brooks Protzmann - Design Director
Joshua Kramer - Design Lead
Corentin Fabry - User Experience Design
Maia Herring - User Experience Design
Brian Rhodes - Product Manager
Komra Salo - Development Lead
Khaled Awad - Back-End Development
John Sanchez - Architecture Lead
MY ROLE
Creative Direction
Visual Design
User Experience Design
CLIENT
Work done while employed at IBM
Product overview
Multicloud Management Platform
IBM MCMP is a digital consumption and delivery platform with integration and orchestration layers that support multiple technology stacks across a multivendor platform.
BENEFITS
- Optimizing cloud spend and usage
- Managing services mapping and dependencies
- Extending DevOps processes for traditional IT and cloud natives
Cost and Asset Management
IBM MCMP Cost and Asset Management is a multi-cloud cost optimization solution that empowers IT departments and finance teams to optimize their public and private cloud spend.
BENEFITS
Discover your assets and costs
Identify underused resources
View, analyze, update spending and allocation
Our Users
Sonya the IT OPS Manager
She is the go-between across Central IT and the lines of business. Sonya facilitates accountability by articulating clear channels of communication and boundaries via policy administration. She’s concerned with both cost and asset optimization.
PAIN POINTS
Struggles with resource visibility and governance policy.
Identifying who’s accountable for maverick spend.
Delivering services lines of business want to consume.
Developing and managing sustained governance.
Developing and maintaining tagging strategies.
Charlotte the Billing Analyst
She oversees record keeping and financial planning as well as managing the financial risks of the organization.
PAIN POINTS
Give the company the information needed to make better decisions faster, amidst changing regulations and market forces.
Balance growth and innovation with cost savings and risk management.
Adhere to regulatory requirements.
Craig the DEV Manager
He leads the grassroots adoption of new technologies, standards (tools, processes), and resources related to application development and deployment.
PAIN POINTS
Navigate the org structure to deliver value at speed while implementing governance at the line of business level.
Deal with delays and bottlenecks across the software delivery lifecycle.
Understand the myriad of options when choosing application services, tools, and platforms.
Work with multiple tools across multiple projects in a multi-cloud environment.
User Feedback Through Research
“Having a succinct dashboard with those reports that we can immediately go at the high-level org-wide or go down to a team and see what those costs are is extremely valuable.”
“One of the nice things about going to the IBM Cloud is we’re not making the same mistakes we made in AWS. Some of those mistakes are that we lumped a bunch of teams under one account...then you have to have tagging in place to extract the costs out.”
Ideation Process
TO-BE JOURNEY MAPPING
LO-FI BLUE SKY
Design Principles
- Speed
- Simplicity
- Automation
- Communication
- Configurable
- Intuitive
Mid-Fidelity Prototype Concepts
MANAGE AT A GLANCE
Understand where Total Monthly & Annual Costs in relation to the budget.
See the Top Spending Accounts by Provider
Understand the top Cost Spikes and Sinks, Usage Spikes or Sinks RI Utilization
Trends, Expiration / Capacity Trends, and which application and who is responsible for those accounts they apply to.
MANAGE BY EXCEPTION
Understand where Total Monthly & Annual Costs in Compare Top 5 Monthly Service Costs by a Single Provider and Single Account Month to Month and By The Numbers
Compare Top 5 Services with the greatest Cost Fluctuation by a single Provider and single account Month to Month and By The Numbers
YTD Budget vs. Actual for A single Asset Account
A single Service Cost and Budget for a Single Provider and Single Account Month to Month and By The Numbers
Mid-Fidelity Testing Synthesis
This was a design failure.
We found that our users did not trust seeing simple numbers and "Top 5" rankings for costs or assets without manipulating the data themselves.
Instead, we learned that it is best to show a budget visualization, with a complete list of assets that allows the user to manipulate using a tagging strategy and a robust filtering option.
Hi-Fidelity Full Screen View
Filter Animation
