Oracle's DNS Management is a grouping of services for users to manage their network and traffic across Oracle Cloud. Previously, various DNS-affiliated services were floating as secondary items under the generic banner of 'Networking', but as services expanded it became clear that a new hierarchy was needed: the introduction of a tertiary group. To present offerings within this group, Oracle needed a landing page structure and design that could scale and be applied to all tertiary groupings in the console.
Goal: Reorganize services under Networking into a new sub-group and design a landing page for tertiary groups.
Challenges: Lacking tertiary and quaternary navigation, confusing grouping of ill-fitting services, no outside user research.
Deliverables: stakeholder interviews, user journeys, visual design, prototyping, and testing.
The first step was a project kickoff, where stakeholders and roles were introduced. The problem was laid out: currently, various secondary services were free-floating within our Networking section, with completely different services such as HTTP Redirects, a relatively minor support service, being sibling with larger offerings like Load Balancers. Our roadmap showed that Networking was only going to expand, so new categories were needed. Through team whiteboard sessions the new order was determined: a new grouping, DNS Management, would house DNS-affiliated services and reduce clutter from the Networking navigation. Five services were going to shift from secondary to tertiary navigation items:
With the new tertiary items, the problem arose of how to present them. Flyout menus only showed items two levels deep, and persistent left-side navigation panels only showed sibling services and no breadcrumb, effectively hiding items from a user and dead-ending them when they arrived at the tertiary level. To solve this, we decided to display items in a landing page. Once the need for a new landing page design was identified, I needed to decide what content from what service would best summarize "DNS Management" for a user.
I implemented the new hierarchy into a clean user journey and presented the direction to the project team. Once the simple user journey was approved, I moved on to tackling the landing page. There were several possibilities regarding how to structure the content presented within, and the team settled on exploring two approaches: either an unbiased list of services or a solution-based approach where services were bundled depending on common user workflows.
To identify what would be most useful to the user, I resorted to stakeholder interviews. User research was not possible due to Oracle limitations, but alternatives existed: competitor analysis, support tickets, and network engineers on my project team. I interviewed the project manager of each service to glean what most support tickets were about, what most customers sign up for, and where most traffic goes. I identified the following points:
Design-wise we needed a layout that would be similar to the first level landing page design, but would be malleable to suit the needs of other tertiary groups. We also needed a way to emphasize solutions and direct users per the points found in the previous section. Working within the Oracle Cloud design system, I reutilized components to distinguish the importance of our services. Supporting services were tucked below the fold, while the most common use case was highlighted in a call to action at the top of the screen.
A common user concern that managers reported was the complexity of the services, so illustrations were suggested as a means to set a theme for services and ease user anxiety. I experimented with placement and messaging across the console to see how well the idea would scale, but enough problems became apparent that I shelved the idea for a later time.
I used Figma to create the designs and prototype. As this project focused on very few screens, the prototype was simple but helped establish the service hierarchy and the interaction of the navigation panels.
The final design structure prioritized Zones as the most visited service, and offered supplementary support in the form of resource health, a Getting Started section that was shifted out of the way but dramatic enough to gain attention, and other strategic placements. Internal surveys found this was a successful combination of the list-based and solution-based approaches. The final design proposal and prototype was presented to a review board and revised as needed. Once approved the project moved into development, when I shifted into a support role when needed by engineers. We are still surveying the success of the design after launch, but initial reactions were that the project improved the navigation hierarchy and reduced confusion.
The main struggle for the project was the lack of user testing. As we did not have the funding to undertake user research, I did my best to validate designs internally. I look forward to returning to this service with card sorting tests and user interviews in the future. Regardless, the landing page itself was sorely needed, and freed up the Networking section for more services while setting a graceful precedent for future tertiary groupings.
