Connector creation flow design and potential enhancements
Overview & Goal
In RHOC service, a wizard is designed for a connector creation flow. The user clicks the ‘Create a connector instance’ button to trigger a wizard with serval steps. This design document would likely be more focused on the pain points of creating a connector and sharing the usability testing findings, as well as exploring potential enhancements.
Concept
The following basic steps are represented in the creation flow:
- Connector selection: Select an application that you would like to connect to.
- Kafka instance: Select select Kafka instance that works with your Connector instance
- Deployment: Select a Connectors namespace to host your Connector instance.
- Configurations: Contains a list of basic and advanced properties configurations.
- Review: Review all properties that the user specified during the creation flow
Pain points of creations flow
After the RHOC Service preview launched, we captured a problem by reviewing metrics of Pendo, that users were dropping out of the creation flow in the UI, mostly during the Connector selection and Kafka instance selection steps.
The following are resources where pain points have been identified by the team:
- Brainstorming activity to generate reasons why users are dropping off -We identify reasons why users might be dropping off at different steps in the flow and generate ideas for how to fix the issue.- RHOC F2F - User flow drop off
- Design thinking session 2023Q1- We reviewed the concepts generated by the previous activity and assessed which ideas should be further explored. -Miro board
- Usability testing 2023 Q2 -We evaluated the current Limited Availability design/experience of the product and reviewed new UI design proposals. -RHOC Usability Report
- Met with solution architects - We reviewed concepts that illustrated potential short-term and long-term UI for creating connectors and defining processing logic. -RHOC+RHOSE UX Vision Takeaways
Key findings and potential enhancements
- There is a strong preference to have a visual representation of steps within a flow. Some participants expressed a desire to use a visual editor for the full creation flow and mentioned AWS Glue/Apache Nifi as references for their visualization of a flow.
- Provide a UX that is streamlined but flexible. Several participants noted that integrated experience should be easier and that there are a lot of pieces the customers need to configure or put together. There are other insights that highlight how important it is to provide a solution that accommodates flexibility in completing tasks in any order they choose, without being blocked or risking losing their progress.