AppHub

Optic AppHub ● Shipped 2022

Reimagining Enterprise Software Deployment at Scale

Overview

Micro Focus (now OpenText) is an enterprise software company focused on modernizing legacy applications and supporting large-scale IT operations in complex enterprise environments. To support product adoption and customer enablement, Micro Focus needed a simpler, more scalable way to deploy its software and empower clients to do the same. I served as the Lead UX Designer, responsible for defining the end-to-end deployment experience

Role

Design Lead
Researcher
Visual Designer

Timeline

March 2020 - March 2022

Tools

Axure
Adobe XD
UX Aspects Design System

Problem & Impact

The existing deployment experience relied heavily on manual CLI workflows and fragmented tooling, making it difficult for customers to select, configure, and deploy software with confidence. These poor deployment experiences reduced customer trust, increased support costs, lengthened sales and proof-of-concept cycles, and discouraged customers from upgrading or adopting new products.

The challenge was to reduce deployment complexity while maintaining clear differentiation across ITOM products and preserving a cohesive enterprise brand.

Approach

Early concepts reviewed with leadership did not fully support the product goals or define the end-to-end deployment experience. Critical workflows were unclear, limiting stakeholder confidence in the solution. To move the work forward, I partnered with Product and UX leadership to clarify goals, scope, risks, and target users.

I began by creating detailed workflow diagrams for all core tasks, mapping how users would discover applications, manage charts, configure options, and encounter error handling. From these flows, I re-envisioned the experience around two distinct but connected UI layers: applications, and deployments.

The experience uses two complementary card types: application cards designed for product discovery and comparison, and deployment cards designed for operational visibility—showing live status, alerts, metrics, and available actions throughout the deployment lifecycle.

Product branding, was applied the application tiles to create recognition and differentiation without interfering with deployment workflows.

I then focused on the deployment configuration experience, designing scalable form workflows that accounted for nested chart options, validation rules, EULA agreements, and custom inputs. Form and card patterns were systemized to ensure consistency and long-term maintainability, with close collaboration with engineering to define edge cases and QA implementation.

Each sprint, I delivered new prototypes aligned to backlog priorities, enabling rapid iteration, stakeholder alignment, and continuous expansion of platform functionality.

Constraints & Trade-offs

Engineering and leadership aligned on a constrained MVP configuration to reduce deployment risk, but this limited flexibility for advanced users. To balance safety with customization, I introduced a YAML builder for advanced chart configurations, paired with a validator that detected conflicts with form selections and prevented invalid deployments

This approach preserved the reliability of the MVP while enabling power-user flexibility without increasing form complexity.

87.5%

improvement in deployment time by eliminating YAML setup and manual configurations

100%

of test participants preferred the AppHub UI to manual CLI deployment

$1.94M

estimated annual savings in engineering effort, enabling teams to focus on strategic work

10+

deployment experiences standardized across the ITOM suite

Results and Impact

Learnings

Future iterations could benefit from deploying multiple applications and at once, allowing templates in order to scale faster

Simplifying workflows up front makes complex systems easier to understand by introducing advanced options gradually, rather than overwhelming users all at once

Designing for expert users demands balancing control vs. simplicity

Building visual assets from scratch forced creative prioritization and cross-team collaboration