About Egnyte
Egnyte is an enterprise file services solution created for businesses that allows it's users to store, share, and collaborate while also securing and protecting the content to a level that enterprises need.
Egnyte is an enterprise file services solution created for businesses that allows it's users to store, share, and collaborate while also securing and protecting the content to a level that enterprises need.
The ProjectEgnyte Connect has a unique link feature, where you can create multiple links for one file to share with internal and external users. The challenge was to improve the current “My Links” feature, and to introduce the capability to view all links shared with the user. I led the project where we redesigned My Links. I was a part of doing the competitive analysis and research, prototyping, testing, and UI design.
My Role
I worked as the sole designer of this project, managing the user research, user experience, and UI.
I worked as the sole designer of this project, managing the user research, user experience, and UI.
My Links? What?
My Links was not a highly used feature, hidden within a settings page. Users were not aware that the feature existed. We also received requests to have one repository of all links shared with them, so they can easily find it.
Accessing My Links
To bring more prominence to My Links, we wanted to move it into the Web UI, and out of Settings. At first we discussed adding a new left panel item next to Bookmarks. The issue with this solution was that the container was limited to our file listing layout.
In the end, we decided to introduce a new paradigm where different “tabs” would be introduced: Files, My Tasks, and My Links. This allowed My Links to not be restricted to the file listing layout, and still be prominent in the UI. During user testing, 4/5 users preferred the top tab.
Row or text hotspot?
Initially, we wanted to simplify the click targets and only have one action per row. For links the user received, the action would be to open the link. For links users shared, the action would be to view the details of the link.
During the prototyping phase, this was the biggest issue when users would interact with the list. They were expecting to click on the file name and open the file - not the link details.
During the prototyping phase, this was the biggest issue when users would interact with the list. They were expecting to click on the file name and open the file - not the link details.
Unknown corner cases
During development, there were corner cases that were uncovered that were not considered in the design. This created some difficulties while developing, and we had to design for these corner cases as they kept being discovered.
After the feature was developed, we sat down with developers to try to solve how to make sure we don’t have these surprise corner cases in the future. In the end, we decided that involving developers earlier on would solve this issue.
From this project I learned to cover as many corner cases before starting the project. Consulting with developers during the research phase could have saved a lot of time trying to figure out the corner cases during development.