Kogito
A new open-source workflow project needed a shared idea of who it was for — and a landing experience that could get people into the work in as few steps as possible.
01 · Context
Making workflow tools accessible through new entry points
Kogito was a new open-source project aimed at making the workflow tools inside Red Hat's Business Automation suite available and accessible to new users through a number of different entry points. We had knowledgeable stakeholders, but the team needed direction on who our users were and how they'd want to use the product.
02 · Aligning the stakeholders
Turning disagreement into a shared workflow
Working with another designer and a UX researcher, we planned to run a workshop during a face-to-face meeting when the whole team was in one room. We had a plan to do a workflow exercise, but the morning of the workshop there were strong stakeholder disagreements about who our users were and what knowledge they'd bring to the product. It was obvious we would need to clear them up in order to move forward with design. We adjusted the plan for the workshop over lunch and reconvened to get every opinion about users and tasks onto the board.
After the workshop the researcher and I combined everything from the boards into one cohesive workflow showing different users and touchpoints. With a smaller group of stakeholders, we reviewed it and flagged the most critical points to focus our design work. Then we tracked the plan as issues and got full-group agreement on next steps. That plan directed the product for the next two-plus years.
03 · Landing page design
Getting users into the work in as few steps as possible
Since the flow relied on several different tools, my top recommendation was a link in every asset to the next tool. The team agreed, but before we could get users into the different products, we needed a landing page that would let users start quickly, and would work in both the web app and a desktop application.
This page needed to provide users with the ability to create a new file from scratch or use an existing file, with the goal being to allow users to get into the creation of workflows in as few steps as possible.
Using PatternFly, I narrowed the style to fit the family of Red Hat products while staying distinct enough to feel genuinely open source.
04 · Editor page design
A masthead that matched the landing page — without cluttering the editor
The editor itself was an existing tool being ported to a new format, so my task was to add a masthead matching the landing page's style and surface the few actions not already in the editor: download, close, edit file name, copy, and share.
I tried a mix of buttons, menus, and icons, and after informal user testing settled on a combination of all three — giving users easy access to common actions without cluttering the page with unnecessary information.
05 · Where it landed
A workflow that outlasted the workshop
The landing page and editor masthead gave Kogito a consistent way in, whether users arrived through the web app or the desktop tool, but the larger outcome was the workflow itself. A single shared picture of users and touchpoints that settled an unstated disagreement the team had been living with. This artifact directed the product's roadmap for the next two-plus years. Alignment on who we were building for turned out to be the most durable deliverable.