Siemens Energy

Context:

Siemens Energy supplies technology for the energy sector and the green transition, and that technology has to stay secure against cyber threats while meeting global regulations. To support this, they were building an internal industrial cybersecurity portal. Cybersecurity work is complex and data-heavy, sits between IT and operational technology, and runs across business units that each work differently. The portal had to make security work simpler and more transparent for expert users without losing accuracy.

My role

I worked with leading user research and helped shaping the UX direction of the product, as well as assisted in creating a design system. I focused on uncovering the needs behind the portal, set the overall UX direction, and designed some of the UIs together with other UI designers.

Before any design, I conducted a series of semi-structured interviews and observations focused on understanding how teams across Siemens Energy actually handle cybersecurity day to day to understand their tasks, workarounds, and needs. I turned what I found into insights, journeys, or prioritier, that shaped the UX direction for the portal. From there I worked with UI designers to turn that direction into concepts and screens tested with users, and refined them as the portal was developed and released in agile iterations over two years when I was a part of this project.

fig. Some of the user research artifacts we used as our north stars during the project.

Solution

The main goal of the project from the user perspective was to create a system that works together with the existing workflow of the cybersecurity experts at Siemens and fits well in their current way of working, while guiding them gently when needed to find better ways of addressing the problems. The main objectives for the system was to be fast and efficient at flagging issues that need to be addressed immidiately and to be clear and helpful to provide all the necessary context at hand for mitigations.

The portal gathers cybersecurity work in one place, through functional modules where tasks and outcomes are stored, assessed, and documented. This makes it easier to manage security consistently across business units. Because it’s developed in agile releases, it keeps improving as user needs and security demands change.