The challenge
One suite. Five starting points. A fixed set of personas.
I began as the sole designer for rate optimization. When five tools merged into one FinOps suite, many users still knew only their original tool. We needed a shared dashboard that introduced the broader suite while keeping familiar work accessible.
Before UX joined, the team had decided the dashboard would be organized around a few fixed personas: a persona filter at the top would decide which category of data each person saw. That decision shaped everything I did next.
Users & my role
FinOps analysts, finance, leadership, and other roles needed to understand their line of business from different perspectives. Within rate optimization, analysts reviewed costs, inventory, and cloud commitments to improve utilization and coverage.
I owned information architecture, visual design, decision coordination, and navigation research. I worked with Product and other designers on the shared experience.
Challenging fixed personas
Responsibilities don’t fit neatly into personas.
I argued that users’ responsibilities overlap. Someone in finance may also do operational work. I advocated for views people could configure themselves, and pointed out that if flexibility arrived later, users would have to relearn the experience.
Product kept the persona approach for the initial scope and deferred customization. Months later, I brought the need back. Product agreed that a few personas could not capture how varied people’s responsibilities were, and I drove customization through design, development, and production.
Defined by persona
Preset categories determined the data users saw.
Organized by the user
Create tabs, choose available data, name categories, and arrange the view.
I placed a plus control after the existing tabs to signal creating another view. Users choose from a predefined selection of data; custom widgets I prepared remain future work.
Shaping the shared dashboard
Decisions that shaped the first release.
Define a focused first release
Product and Design agreed the initial set of metrics. We used uniform dashboard items and placed persona filtering at the top. We omitted time-range filtering because the data combined historical and predictive views.
Test familiar tasks in unfamiliar navigation
In live, one-to-one Figma usability sessions, I asked users to reach a familiar deeper page from the new dashboard. Some struggled with updated or similar labels. I presented recommendations to leadership; we changed confusing labels while allowing room to learn new terminology through exploration.
Outcome
More control over how work is organized.
User-defined tabs reached production. The delivered change lets users organize views around their responsibilities rather than rely only on fixed personas.
The project shows how I connect research, product decisions, and delivery—and return to an important user need when it falls outside the initial scope.
The Rate Optimization team received the 2023 Hasso Plattner Founders’ Award for Operational Excellence. I was its UX designer. This recognition relates to rate optimization, rather than the shared dashboard project.