Venom Shield — Design Process. Project Background
By: Swathy Rajendran
Tags: Design, User Experience Design, Design Process, UX Design, UX Research

Project Background

The company is launching a new Email Anti-malware and anti-virus solution (Venom Shield) aimed at small and medium-sized businesses. The aim of this solution is to enable systems administrators within these businesses to scan their network for malware and viruses in general and to, therefore, increase the overall security of the networks that they are entrusted with.

This new security application will be web-based and is comprised of different components including:

A master console via which the administrator will manage the software, see results via the interactive dashboard(s), receive alerts, as well as generate reports based on the information about every computer on the network sent from the respective Agent Software. Agent software that will be installed on every computer where the anti-malware protection is needed. These agents will be managed via the master console hence they will be constantly communicating with it to pass scanning data and results.

It is the anti-malware designed with the user in mind!

Requirement Analysis

My research involved studying about basics of Information security and understanding the users that will be using the tool. For this, I conducted interviews with Information Security Consultants who use Anti Malware tools on day to day basis.

Tools used: Notepad, Google Jam, Whimsical

Key take away post research

Master Console

After some research, I reached the conclusion that Master console will be the sole tool that can control and give permissions to the various Agent consoles. This master console of the venom shield will be accessed by admins and subject matter experts. They will be scheduling the scans at various intervals, Monitor the threats, check for updates and check scan status.

Agent Console

This is the part that will be visible to the end-users or Agents. They need not be any security experts but any random users. So they just want to know if their system is scanned, protected and safe to use. They have minimal permissions but they can scan their systems anytime as well.

It’s designed in a way that it can be pushed and pulled to the side of the desktop.

Information Architecture

As a next step, I moved to Information Architecture — Laid down the gathered information

Tools used: Notepad, Whimsical

Information Architecture (IA)

Wireframes

Next, is Wires ( Usability Heuristics, Law of Proximity, Fitt’s Law, Hicks Law, etc are in place)

Tools used: Notepad, Adobe XD

UX thought process

The left-hand side has the Expandable Menu with quick access tools

The Top navigation bar icons

Search Bar — Allows the Admin user to look for specific features or issues

Notifications — Things that need users immediate attention such as alerts, Action Items, Tickets assigned to the user, any updates on the tickets raised by the user, etc will be displayed here

Quick access bar — Any features the user use more often or frequently will be displayed here — User can customize it and add the favorite feature or the system detects the most frequent features here automatically

Profile — Account profile and permissions can be viewed here

Dashboard Wires

The Dashboard has the key features such as Scan status, Active Agents, Malware Deducted and Open Tickets — I would like to think that the Dashboard is customizable

Alerts is something user constantly need to keep an eye. The alerts can be set in high priority alerts or all alerts etc

User can also create or add tickets and also start scans

Branding

Brand guidelines are already provided to me — Branding helps to identify a product and distinguish it from other products and services

Brand guidelines.

UI Design

Wireframe translate to UI

Master Console

Agent Console

Note

I have included only one screen for now will be updating this further