Pure Storage is a data storage company that specializes in all-flash storage hardware and software, designed to provide high performance and reliability for enterprise IT environments. Their products focus on simplicity, efficiency, and innovation, aiming to reduce the complexity and cost associated with traditional storage solutions.
Pure Storage has over 11,500 customers worldwide. This customer base includes a mix of global enterprises, cloud providers, and public sector organizations.
Pure Storage
Lead UX Designer
Pure Estimate
Before & After
Pure Storage's Pure Estimate tool is projected to significantly impact bookings for subscriptions and ownership with expectations of over 60% growth in 2024 leading into 2025.
This projected surge is driven by the tool's ability to provide accurate estimations for subscription and ownership models, streamlining the sales process and enhancing customer satisfaction.
By reducing friction between prospects and final sales, Pure Estimate is positioned to be a key driver in the organization’s continued success and expansion in the market.
Overview
Pure Storage hired me to take over the UX for Pure Estimate under their Digital Experience (DX) business unit.
Pure Estimate is a powerful tool designed to empower both prospects and existing customers by providing accurate estimations for subscription and ownership models. It simplifies the decision-making process by offering clear and precise calculations which help their users to make quicker and more informed decisions.
"Chris, whose ability to have a vision and simplify complex workflows with minimal requirements is truly remarkable. His focus on modern design principles and system thinking ensures that projects are not only innovative but also efficient and effective. When thrown into the deep end, Chris hits the ground running, delivering exceptional products with remarkable speed and quality."
Ben Lee
Senior Solutions Architect
Pure Storage
This was another project with short time constraints and little to no requirements.
The first step in this redesign process was to hold kickoff meetings with stakeholders to identify the decision makers, understand the business needs, understand audiences, identifiy requirements, and align expectations.
After conducting interviews with the Major Stakeholders to better understand the who, what, where, when and why, my approach was to start to untangle, repurpose, and refine the 'good' from the v1 attempt to meet stakeholder expectations, but also reimagine the experience and find opportunities of improvement. This included ideating and refining the stepper experience, expanding functionality, and adding robust capabilities while keeping in mind important dates, constraints, and development debt.
Ideation
Working under tight time constraints with no clear requirements, I approached the ideation phase of designing Pure Estimate by first focusing on rapid brainstorming sessions with my SME to generate a wide range of ideas.
I used low-fidelity prototypes to explore different concepts prioritizing customer and business needs, usability, functionality and the overall experience.
I leveraged my understanding of the core objectives to rapidly create wireframes and clickable protoypes to demo to stakeholders and socialize to the wider organization. This allowed me to iterate rapidly based on their feedback and input from my SME.
I explored finding the right mechanisms and displaying the right information, at the right place, at the right time.
After wireframe POC buy in, I moved on to designing high-fidelity prototypes integrating the visual identity and voice and tone of the brand. The goal was to create a visually appealing and cohesive interface that also adhered to accessibility standards.
Throughout this process I maintained continuous feedback loops with stakeholders and customers making iterative adjustments based on their input. This approach ensured that the final design was not only functional but also met the needs and expectations of the customers and business.
Additionally, I substituted the multi-stepper with a more intuitive action/result pattern. This change drastically simplified the workflow by allowing users to see immediate outcomes of their actions without navigating through multiple steps.
Pure Storage Takeaways
This project was a reminder of the art of getting 'buy in' by stakeholders and the importance of the role designers play in educating and advocating design to those who are not designers and do not understand the process.
By getting the stakeholdes involved early, educating, and using visual communication, trust was attained and design was able to freely explore and produce an full end-to-end product in a short period of time.
Pure Estimate was very well accepted not only by customers, but by the DX business unit and the larger organization.
