Mobile App Management 2.0

App Management 2.0 is a revamp of Sauce Labs’ current app storage solution, offering users a centralised hub to store, manage, test, and distribute mobile applications. This project lays the foundation for Sauce Labs’ long-term vision of becoming the industries’ primary continuous platform for test.

As the lead designer, I proposed the initial concept, collaborated with the product manager to define milestones, and coordinated with engineering leadership to ensure alignment across a complex, cross-functional team.

The goal

We undertook this project for two key reasons. First, to address pressing user needs: multiple Fortune 500 customers had reported difficulties managing and finding apps on our app management page, leading to inefficiencies and frustration. Second, the PM and I recognised an opportunity to strategically align this initiative with Sauce Labs’ long-term vision, which is to become a scalable, extensible platform that integrates seamlessly with other tools and plugins.

In short, our goal is to enhance the app management experience by enabling users to efficiently find, manage, and test their mobile applications, while simultaneously laying the groundwork to move our platform closer to achieving the company’s broader vision.

Aggregated customer complaints and requests from Productboard

Understanding the problem space and opportunity

I spent some time to collect multiple data points to help me understand the challenges we were facing and gather enough insights to make informed assumptions and design decisions.

To understand user pain points and needs, I partnered with customer success/support teams. Observed key customers interacting with the system. The key insights we found were:

• Unclear information architecture
• Limited search and retrieval capabilities
• Poor permission management and cross team visibility

To gather insights of our product vision, I conducted desk research, competitor analysis, and did rounds of discussions with the PM to figure out the possible intersection between the user pain points and the product direction.

User journey map for an overview of workflow

The PM, the engineering team, and I discussed and mapped out the current state and challenges of app management on the whiteboard

I tried to understand industry standards by analysing competitors’ object models, labels and relationships

Drafting out the preliminary design concept

Moving on, I then established our initial design concept: Enabling users to flexibly organise their apps, quickly find what they need to perform their desired actions, and facilitate better cross-team collaboration.

The proposal includes:

• Project Setup: Allow users to create custom categories.
• Enhanced Search: Enable users to quickly find what they need and take action efficiently.
• Share: Facilitate cross-team collaboration.
• Permission Control: Regulate cross-team collaboration and help users better manage their apps. Additionally, this feature is designed with future scalability in mind, as permissions will become increasingly important when more functionalities are added to support cross-team workflows.

A sampling of some of the hierarchy and data models we created during the design process to align stakeholders on the new app management information architecture

Once the information architecture was finalized, I shifted my focus back to the UI and UX. I mapped out rough user flows for key scenarios, such as uploading apps and searching for apps. At this stage, I concentrated on defining how the user flows should function within the new information architecture, ensuring that the process from starting a task to completing it felt logical and seamless.

Proof of Concept

To validate my design concept in the early stage and collect feedbacks as soon as possible, I conducted both internal and external prototype testing to put my design concept under test.

Internally, I ran a moderated prototype testing to test with 5 key customer-facing roles due to their extensive knowledge of our enterprise customers, such as technical account managers, customer support engineers, and solution engineers. Externally, I recruited users through an in-app survey powered by Pendo to perform unmoderated tests. I asked users to go through a clickable prototype built by Maze with 4 tasks and report if they believe they completed each task, how hard they would rate them, and their thoughts along the way. In the end, we were able to gather 21 responses + 5 responses from the internal test, which gave us 26 data points to analyse.

Cips of running moderated prototype testing with internal customer-facing roles

Recruiting Customers for unmoderated prototype testing with Pendo.io and Maze

Analysis and synthesis of external prototype test results

The feedback was a mix of positives and areas for improvement. Users appreciated the improved structure and layout, validating the design’s direction. While minor suggestions included decluttering the UI, the primary concern centered on better onboarding for the new information architecture.

Initially, users found the concept of “projects” unclear and onboarding slow due to the lack of on-screen guidance. It required extra explanation to demonstrate how this grouping mechanism improved app organization and management. However, the good sign is, once understood, users quickly recognized and valued the flexibility and efficiency it offered.

Finalizing the design and moving into implementation

After finalising the design direction and getting closer to implementation, I realised we need to break down the design to several manageable work packages not only to deliver progressively and consistently, but also to reduce user resistance and give them time to adapt.

I worked together with the product manager to prioritise and define milestones. After discussions, we decided to focus first on improving app findability and management. The second priority would be sharing and permission features. This decision was based on the fact that project setup and search have fewer dependencies, allowing us to quickly unblock users and deliver value. In contrast, sharing and permission require more time to align with other teams, such as platform team.

Milestone 1: Increase app findability and management

Key Features:

• Project setup and structure
• Global app search
• Enhanced tag, filter and sort

Project based structure hi-fi design

Before

Unclear hierarchy and inefficient identification for the right app build

After

Improved visual hierarchy and future scalability. Added tags and filters for better organisation and identification

Milestone 2: Introduce share and permission control to foster collaboration

Key Features:

• Share apps across teams
• Defined permission control

Added functionality to share apps across teams to foster collaboration

Defined permission documented in spreadsheet

What’s next?

This project is far from over. We’re currently in the process of rolling out Milestone 1 and have established clear success metrics to track our progress. As with most enterprise software, adoption takes time, and realising the full impact of these changes will require patience and ongoing iteration.

I am confident in the potential of this project and the value it brings. It has laid a strong foundation to advance our company’s vision. Looking ahead, we’ve planned additional milestones, including integrating app distribution functionality from TestFairy, one of our acquired products because we want to cover the full app development journey(you test and you distribute), and leveraging test data on our platform to provide app-related insights.