The problem space

Baseboard management consoles are foundational technology that are usually only interfaced with through a CLI. Monitoring the health of your connected machines is too important to get lost in endless command-lines. OpenBMC serves to change that by offering users a customizeable interface that leverages new technology to provide a modern solution. 

My role

I worked to bring what was typically done in command-line to life in a responsive and accessible interface that provided actionable insights. This project involved a lot of working with the open community to make sure the product stayed true to it’s open-source nature, even down to the design system used, which I helped design.

CLI to GUI

A typical feature-story would involve our design researcher, Nicole, at the earliest stage so they could understand the feature and its dependencies, as well as build a relationship with our subject-matter-experts (SMEs). Once a feature was understood enough, I worked with our researcher to produce early-stage wireframes so that we could rapidly iterate on them with the SMEs, working through what wouldn't work and how to achieve a modern implenteation of what has always been represented abstractly.

After a few rounds of wireframes, I took to creating a mid-fidelity clickable-prototype which Nicole and I user tested. Having the designer being a part of the user testing phase allows them to really see where sticking points are and observe the user puzzling out how to overcome tasks.

Another few rounds of iterations based on results of the user-testing, and the final flow is ready to be produced. At this point I collaborated with the UX engineer about specific interactions and what components to use through shoulder-to-shoulder reviews as well as a specification sheet for all the gritty details such as spacing and style tokens.

Opening the design system

My experience with design systems is what contributed to my assignment to OpenBMC. The community had decided to pivot from the front-end framework the application used to a more flexible one. With the new framework, Bootstrap, we needed an updated design system to accomodate a generic UI that allowed for branding down-stream.

I achieved this by working with the community to identify what styles they felt were too branded and what felt generic for anyone to use.

After establishing what the generic styling would be, I ensured the branding customization would work by stress testing each component with a new styling. This eventually led to me developing the styling for IBM's down-stream version of OpenBMC.

This involved partnering with our UX engineer and other front-end developers in shoulder-to-shoulder reviews and style sheets to ensure the generic and IBM styling came through as designed in the final product.

The outcome of this work was a Sketch kit for designers to use when creating new features for OpenBMC and eBMC that matched 1:1 with the implemented front-end code.

Team lead
Design research
UX design
UX design
UX Engineer

Derick Montague →
Nicole Keyes →
Parishrut Bhatia
Priyanka Pillai
Yoshie Muranaka →