Allegion / Access Management

The clever idea wasn’t the right one.

Administrators use this portal every day to add people to Allegion’s applications, and the list of applications kept growing.

My role: Senior Designer
In collaboration: Design + Development Team
Timeframe: 2018 – 2019

One decision: navigation that says where you are.

The decision

A tree panel, tested and set aside.

I researched the user management space, then focused on making administration “super simple.” I explored progressive disclosure with a tree-panel concept, but user testing raised concerns about screen real estate. Surveys showed users wanted persistent navigation that says where they are. That led to side navigation with breadcrumbs.

Connected moments

Overview
Users
Invitations
Companies
Apps
Actions

The Access Management dashboard: four tiles for total, active, inactive and unvalidated users, a user-activity line chart by month for new and returning users, and a gauge of unvalidated users beside the people waiting to be validated, each with a resend button. — The dashboard

The dashboard

A company’s users

The user card

Persistent navigation

A side nav that says where you can go, and breadcrumbs that say where you are.

A company page inside Access Management: the company’s card and administrator at the top, tabs for overview, apps, branches and users, and a searchable table of users with name, email and role. — A company’s users

Find, filter, act

Search and filters over the table, roles in plain words, and a row is a way into a user.

A user card open over the company page: the person, their email and company, when they were last active, buttons to make them a company admin or verify their email, and per-application access toggles with the role for each. — The user card

What they did

An activity feed beside the access, so a question about a user is answered on the same card.

Administrators couldn’t see their own users.

The Access Management portal, used daily by Allegion and company administrators to add users to applications, was outdated. As the number of applications grew, it got harder to manage.

A tree panel, tested and set aside.

I researched the user management space, then focused on making administration “super simple.” I explored progressive disclosure with a tree-panel concept, but user testing raised concerns about screen real estate. Surveys showed users wanted persistent navigation that says where they are. That led to side navigation with breadcrumbs.

User interviews and surveys on navigation preferences
A testbed for the Project Phoenix design system

More of the work

My Apps: the applications a user has access to as cards with a configure link on each, and below them the rest of the company’s applications with an add link. — Every application in one place, and adding yourself to one is a link on its card. Design comp, 2019; placeholder names.

A company’s branches as a searchable table: name, address, sector number, location and employee count. — A company’s branches, searchable. Design comp, 2019; placeholder names.

A company’s overview: total, active, inactive and unvalidated users for that company, and a gauge of its unvalidated users with the people waiting. — The same visibility, one company at a time. Design comp, 2019; placeholder names.

Side navigation, with breadcrumbs.

Visibility, and a proving ground for Phoenix.

What was observed: The biggest feedback from administrators was the immediate visibility they gained. The project was also one of the first real tests of the Phoenix design system.
What this case doesn’t claim: Figures. The original case study described the direction of change without a published baseline or method, so it is given here as what people reported, not as a measurement.

What fed back into the system.

What the project validated fed back into the design system and into other enterprise products.

Ask about Access Management

What did testing change?Why side navigation?What do administrators see now?