2025

HPE: Designing an Information-Dense Enterprise Experience for Power Users

Role

Senior Product Designer

Duration

3 weeks

Scope of Work

End-to-end UX: problem framing → strategy → interaction design → handoff

Tools

A graphic design with four rounded shapes in red, purple, green, and eight shapes in blue and a peach, arranged vertically on a black background.

🧩 The Feature

Premium Account Family is an internal enterprise tool used by Customer Success Managers and NSP (Network Support Portal) Superusers to manage large B2B customers with multiple premium contracts.

The feature allows CSMs to group related premium accounts under a single engagement family, providing a unified, navigable view of accounts that previously existed in isolation.

🎯 The Problem

Enterprise customers often have 10–20+ premium accounts—but CSMs had no way to view or manage them as a unified group.

What was happening

CSMs were forced to:

  • Navigate across multiple disconnected account pages

  • Manually track relationships in spreadsheets

  • Lose context every time they switched accounts

For instance, managing a customer with 15 accounts across 3 regions meant opening 15+ different screens just to get a complete picture—then doing it all over again the next day.

Original HPE NSP system architecture. CSMs navigated directly to individual Account Details—there was no unified layer for managing related premium accounts as a group.

Original system architecture. CSMs navigated individual Account Details with no unified account management layer.

The system gap: The architecture had no unified layer for managing related accounts. CSMs had to navigate through individual Account Details pages to access each account separately.

This fragmentation slowed CSMs down, increased mental overhead, and made it harder to stay on top of large accounts.

Result: High effort, low visibility, and error-prone workflows.

Key Pain Points

  • ❌ No unified view of related accounts under one organization

  • ❌ Excessive clicking across disconnected screens

  • ❌ Manual relationship tracking outside the system

  • ❌ Context loss during navigation

👥 The Users

Customer Success Managers & NSP Superusers

These are highly technical, experienced professionals managing enterprise relationships with 5–20+ premium accounts per customer.

Key Insight

These CSMs don't need simplified interfaces—they're managing accounts worth millions and need comprehensive data at their fingertips.

What looks "clean and minimal" to them is actually slower. They wanted everything visible so they could work fast.

⚖️ The Design Challenge

The Core Tension

Most UX patterns push for simpler interfaces that reveal information gradually, keeping screens clean and cognitive load low.

But CSMs needed to see account hierarchies, relationships, statuses, and metadata all at once to make informed decisions quickly.

My Decision

I chose to design a comprehensive, data-rich interface that prioritized fewer clicks and persistent context—even if it introduced a learning curve.

Why this works: The users are technically sophisticated, and the work itself is complex. Oversimplifying would just push that complexity elsewhere—into more navigation, memory work, or external spreadsheets.

[Visual: Early exploration comparing minimal vs. dense layouts]

🎨 The Solution

Updated architecture with Premium Account Families providing unified account management.

My contribution: I introduced Premium Account Families as a new branch in the system architecture, creating a unified entry point for managing related accounts.

A unified experience built for enterprise professionals who value efficiency over hand-holding.

Premium Account Family introduces a first-class engagement layer that allows CSMs to group, navigate, and manage related premium accounts without losing context.

🔀 Root Account Selection

Starting point: CSMs access Premium Account Families from the Internal Tools menu and land on this page.

The decision: CSMs select one root account at a time before viewing families.

Why it works:
With 10,000+ root accounts, showing everything at once would crash the system and overwhelm users. Single-root selection keeps CSMs focused on one customer at a time while keeping the interface fast.

From here, two scenarios unfold:

Scenario 1:

No families yet - Click "Create Family" to start the flow

Scenario 2:

Families exist - View existing families or create additional ones for that root account

🎯 Simple Family Creation

[Image: Family creation modal/flow]

Stripped down to essentials—3 steps:

  1. Name the family + pick service level

  2. Multi-select eligible accounts

  3. Add optional metadata (system auto-generates Engagement ID)

No overwhelming forms. Just what CSMs need to get started quickly.

🧭 Unified Family Dashboard

One screen replaces dozens of disconnected pages.

  • Family metadata (name, ID, status, duration)

  • Live, searchable account table (Contract ID, Party ID)

  • Inline add/remove actions

  • Region & service-level visibility

  • Downloadable reports

Result: ~75% reduction in navigation clicks

[Visual: Annotated Family Settings screen]

🧠 Smart Account Management

Built-in intelligence prevents errors at scale.

  • Auto-filters to valid, non-expired premium contracts

  • Prevents accounts from belonging to multiple families

  • Enforces service-level compatibility

  • Real-time eligibility feedback

[Visual: Account selection with filtering + validation]

🎯 Visual Distinction & Hierarchy

Families are unmistakable at a glance.

  • Distinct labels and color coding

  • Breadcrumbs showing family → account hierarchy

  • Quick switching between accounts and families

  • Clear active/inactive status indicators

[Visual: Side-by-side hierarchy comparison]

Design Principle: For technical CSMs, fewer screens and persistent context reduce mental effort more than simplified interfaces.

🧪 Validation

I conducted UAT testing with CSMs before launch to validate the design approach.

Key findings:

  • Identified and fixed usability bugs

  • Refined filtering logic based on real-world edge cases

  • Improved error messaging and validation feedback

Testing confirmed what I suspected: CSMs appreciated the comprehensive view. They'd rather learn a richer interface once than click through multiple screens daily.

[Visual: Testing insights or iteration examples]

✨ Final Designs

Family Creation Flow

[Image: Family creation modal or flow]

Simple 3-step process:

  1. Name family + select service level

  2. Multi-select eligible accounts

  3. Add optional metadata (auto-generates Engagement ID)

Family Management

[Image: Full Family Settings screen]

Comprehensive control center:

  • Edit family details

  • Search and filter accounts

  • Add/remove with live validation

  • Track engagement duration and status

  • Download reports for offline work

Navigation & Discovery

[Image: Navigation patterns]

Streamlined paths:

  • Search families by name, description, creator

  • Filter by status, service level, region

  • Context-aware navigation

  • Quick actions menu

Account Table View

[Image: Account table with Contract ID, Party ID columns]

Data-rich table design:

  • Sortable columns

  • Search functionality

  • Inline actions

  • Clear account identifiers

[Link to Live Feature] [Prototype]

📊 Impact

Efficiency Gains:

  • 75% reduction in clicks to access related accounts

  • Enhanced visibility across account families

  • Strong adoption across CSM teams

  • Live feature successfully launched

  • Enabled CSMs to manage large enterprise customers with significantly less context switching.

Delivered:

  • MVP in 3 weeks with full engineering specs

  • UAT-validated design with user-driven improvements

  • Scalable foundation for future service level expansion

💭 Reflections

Know your users well enough to break the rules

Honestly, pushing back on "best practices" felt risky at first. Dense interfaces aren't what you typically see in portfolio case studies. But I'd spent enough time understanding CSMs to know that what they needed was efficiency, not simplicity—and sometimes those are different things.

What worked:

  • Trusting users' technical capabilities instead of assuming limitations

  • Consolidating information to eliminate jumping between screens

  • Building smart validation directly into the UI

What I'd do differently:

  • Establish baseline metrics earlier for better comparison

  • Explore more micro-interactions for smoother account management flows

  • Document UAT findings more thoroughly for future iterations

Key Takeaway: Match your interface to the actual complexity of the work. For experienced users dealing with inherently complex systems, comprehensive views often create less friction than oversimplified ones.

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