Researching the Kubernetes market to formulate and design 7 use cases pages to go on their website.

Business Landscape

Nirmata is a company that offers a platform (Nirmata Policy Manager) that optimizes efficiency for users to build and run Kubernetes clusters. Nirmata Policy Manager uses policy-as-code to govern security, operations, and costs across clusters efficiently. The company is essentially an all-things-Kubernetes management company and Kubernetes is open-source code that is used for automating software deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.

Assignment

Create a use cases page that successfully shows users why Nirmata Policy Manager is the best way to manage Kubernetes clusters. Each page/use-case should present a problem that most Kubernetes users face, how Nirmata Policy Manager can solve this problem, and how users can sign up for a demo.

Approach

In order to create a page that successfully advertises Nirmata Policy Manager, each page/ use-case should present a problem that most Kubernetes users face, how Nirmata Policy Manager can solve this problem, and how users can sign up for a demo. Our goal was to create a seamless experience that guides the user part of the page and effectively markets Nirmata Policy Manager while engaging the user. Given that Kubernetes is a complex concept to explain, and there is lots of dense information that could be put on the page, we needed to strategize which information is important and effective and which information to leave out.

In order to do this, we used User Personas to understand the pain points of Kubernetes users, establish our audience, and determine what information would be useful to users.

Market Research: Persona

During the process of creating user personas, I spent much of my time learning about the Kubernetes market. It was the "ah-ha" moment of my internship when I finally completely understood what Kubernetes is, why it is useful, who our product helps, and how (my place as a designer and marketing intern) can help users understand why our product is the best Kubernetes management platform.

I studied the market with the Product Manager looking over research done by the previous marketing team.

Research Outcomes

We decided that our general audience would be DevOps engineers looking to improve the security of their Kubernetes Pods, and business roles in companies looking to improve application and DevOps team efficiency.

The user personas helped us create 7 use cases with a basic structure that a user can follow.

1. First, they are taken to the title of the use case explaining the problem.

2. Second, they see the With Nirmata You Can and the Key Benefits section which explains how Nirmata Policy Manager can solve this problem that the user might potentially have.

3. Last, they see a link to a demo of the product which also helps us find leads.

Iteration One

This was my first draft. As a novice designer, I took risks and tried new design ideas. After speaking with an experienced web designer, she advised me to:

1. use more stock images in addition to the mock-ups and fewer icons.

2. My first draft looked a bit outdated and designers are leaning towards fewer icons and more photos.

3. she said to group text into smaller sections to make the site look less wordy.

4. Also, the gradient did not match the branding of the website because it introduced a new color: purple.

Using her advice and came up with a few more designs before I created my final mockup.

Final Design