Designing Secure & Flexible Admin Tools
Company: Wind River Systems
Role: UX Designer
Tools: Figma, FigJam
Duration: May - August 2022
Team: UX Architect (Manager)
Stakeholders: Product Manager, Lead Developer
Overview
Wind River’s administrative tools needed a secure yet flexible design to accommodate multiple user roles and access levels while maintaining strict security protocols. The task was to create an interface that provided the right level of access to each user without overwhelming them with unnecessary information.
The Challenge
Wind River needed a secure yet flexible admin tool for managing user roles and access permissions across their platform. The goal was to balance security constraints with usability to ensure administrators could efficiently assign, modify, and revoke user permissions without unnecessary complexity.
Understanding the Problem
Through stakeholder discussions and weekly feedback meetings, we identified key challenges:
Creating Flexible Designs
Accommodating different user roles while ensuring users only see relevant information.
Security Restrictions
Implementing role-based access control (RBAC) without compromising usability.
Technical Complexity
Designing a system that aligns with development constraints and existing security models.
Simplicity vs. Scalability
The MVP had a tight deadline, requiring us to prioritize core features while ensuring future expansions wouldn't require major UI redesigns.
Research and User Testing
To validate user needs and expectations, I conducted 5 user interviews with Field Application Engineers (FAEs):
What We Wanted to Learn:
How admins currently assign and manage permissions.
Where users struggled with existing workflows.
How much information should be shown vs. hidden based on role.
Design Iterations
Simplifying Design with Table-Based Design
Admins needed quick ways to assign roles, manage access, and prevent errors. After multiple iterations, we designed:
Modular Table Design:
Allowed columns to be added/removed based on user roles.
Role-Based Hyperlinks:
Enabled quick access for certain users while restricting it for others.
Inline Editing & Batch Actions:
Allowed admins to update multiple users at once, reducing repetitive work.
Balancing MVP Simplicity with Future Scalability
Since new features were planned post-MVP, I structured the UI to be:
Modular & Expandable
Designed table structures, settings menus, and role assignments to allow for future additions without major UI changes.
Lightweight MVP Features
Some features were intentionally simplified for launch, but designed to be easily extended later.
Handling Edge Cases
Managing user licenses introduced multiple failure scenarios, such as: insufficient licenses available, assigning licenses to users who already have them, bulk assignments across multiple teams.
Solution: Dynamic Error Handling & Flow Maps
Designed real-time error messages that show admins exactly how many licenses need adjustment.
Introduced bulk assignment confirmation popups to prevent accidental overuse.
Used flow mapping to track all edge cases and avoid missing scenarios.
Deliverables and Impact
Final Deliverables:
Interactive prototypes tested & refined through stakeholder feedback.
Detailed documentation for developers to ensure seamless implementation.
Usability-tested interface, balancing security, flexibility, and admin efficiency.
What I Would Have Done Differently
When handling large datasets, traditional tables can become visually overwhelming, slowing down user decision-making. The admin dashboard relied heavily on tables, but I would have explored:
Alternatives to standard table layouts, such as expandable sections, dynamic grouping, or priority sorting for key admin actions.
More prominent visual hierarchy for the most frequently used controls.
