Rob Clark, UX Director as Aspenware, presented on the topic of leading versus competing at Oracle CloudWorks in San Francisco. In this presentation Rob discussed the recent redesign of HOSTING's customer portal. When designing the customer experience for HOSTING Rob took the approach that it was not good enough to merely improve the customer experience, the team had the opportunity to create a competitive advantage for HOSTING if they completely re-imagined the experience. In the first category of slides we see the original portal for Hosting, a Denver virtualization company on par with Rackspace and Amazon Cloud. Note that the design is full of tables, lists, numbers, words, and links. Most tasks took several clicks to reach, some as many as 8 or 9 clicks. It was slow, and many screens took over a minute to load. The experience was so painful that most customers called Hosting’s support staff and had them click through the screens to fulfill their requests rather than using the system themselves. Hosting asked us to redesign the system with a focus on performance, simpler information architecture, and beauty. The second category of slides shows the redesign. It resulted in screens that generally took less than seven seconds to load, and most were sub-three-second load times. Most tasks became within reach in less than three clicks, and the look matched existing branding and became simpler and flatter. It was a huge success. Then Hosting returned to us, asking for a second redesign, one that did something innovative and new. They wanted to break free of the pack and leave the competition in the dust. The third category of slides shows the result. Lists and tables and words and numbers became objectified. We made every single activity available within three views that became progressively more detailed as needed. We used colors, shapes, and layout to create instant recognition of meaning and status throughout the system, and designed something that would grow well with change. Hosting was ecstatic, and the design implementation began. It has been a sea change for their customers and created an upheaval in their vertical, with their competitors now challenged to keep up.

1. THE PORTAL
ORIGINAL
HOSTING’S
customers weren’t
using the HOSTING
portal to manage
their virtual servers.
Why not?

2. a mess of links, tables,
words, and numbers
buried links in an
organizational maze
multiple navigational
menus

3. ignored news and alerts
confusing fee attribution

4. THE PORTAL
REDESIGN
For immediate ROI
we redesigned the
information
architecture and the
look of the portal.

5. SOLUTIONS
SERVICES
TICKETS
BILLING
TRENDS
TICKETSC U S T O M E R P O R T A L
David H.Support
Open Tickets
Last Updated
Status
This Month
Timeframe
Anyone
Submitted by
(ICBM) [DAL01] restore campus db1
[DAL01] PAR not working for anyone on overnights
Hosting.com Solution For: Look Cinemas - #H224197
Open
Open
Open
Subject Status
23 min ago
Yesterday
Jan 1
Create Ticket
Export Tickets
simpler navigation filtering options

6. SOLUTIONS
SERVICES
TICKETS
BILLING
TRENDS
MANAGE USERSC U S T O M E R P O R T A L
David H.Support
Name
Hide Disabled Users
Active / Admin
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Active
Active
Active
Active
Active
Active
Active
Active
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System Admin
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DBA
Developer
Contractor
System Admin
Today
Feb 2, 2013
Yesterday
3 days ago
Jan 13, 2013
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Dec 12, 2012
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Status Title / Position Last Login
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Cameron Wood
Dave Malone
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Jim Kerrigan
Michelle Knowles
Scott Brennan
Steve Brown
Tera Gall
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cleaner design

7. THE PORTAL
INNOVATION
After success in the
short term, we took
the portal beyond
merely competing
with other portals.
We created the
leading portal
experience in the
virtualization
industry.

8. Hex Dashboard
WWW SQL AD
WWW SQL FW
SRCH EML
SRCH
WWW SQL SQL
AD SQL
IMIS SQL
SQL SQL SQL
WWW SQL SRCH
WEBSITE - PROD IMIS - DEV
JOHN KIPLING - DEV
WWW SQL SQL
IMIS
WEBSITE - EXP
objects instead of lists
visual server status

9. Solution View
WEBSITE - EXP $120/MO
WWW
denver.server-h-194
6G RAM
SQL
sql-thorton
8G RAM
SQL
sql-thorton-2
8G RAM
IMIS
imis-2-stl
8G RAM
Configuring...
est. 3 minutes
Duplicate this solution + $120/MO
Park this solution - $110/MO
View billing
Create a PDF spec sheet
Add a server
progressive details as needed
navigation appears where it is
meaningful

10. Server View
WWW
SQL
IMIS
imis-2-stl
8G RAM
imis-2-stl
OS
Architecture
Linux
64-bit
99.9999% uptime
RAM 8 G
RAM in use
CPU
7.9 G
Dual-coreCPU
IMIS - DEV solution
INSTALLED SOFTWARE
intuitive object management

11. Solution name...
Choose a purpose...
Ordering
WWW SQL AD
WWW SQL FW
SRCH EML
SRCH
WWW SQL SQL
AD SQL
IMIS SQL
SQL SQL SQL
WWW SQL SRCH
WEBSITE - PROD $145/MO IMIS - DEV $235/MO
J.KIPLING - DEV $10/MO
SHAREPOINT
CREATE SOLUTIONCREATE SOLUTION
EXPERIMENTAL
Experimental (EXP)
Development (DEV)
Test (TEST)
Production (PROD)
Add a server
Delete this solution
SHAREPOINT - EXP
easily understood fee
attribution