Terraform
Overview
As the sole Senior Product Designer for HashiCorp's Terraform, I was responsible for leading all design efforts and shaping the product's user experience. I was particularly passionate about, and proud of, my work on the Cost Estimation feature and the complete redesign of the Run Details page for Terraform Cloud and Enterprise.
This project allowed me to address a key user need – cost visibility – by seamlessly integrating cost estimates and improving the overall usability of the Run Details page. As the only designer, I owned the entire design process, from user research and concept exploration to wireframing, prototyping, and stakeholder alignment. The final design empowered users with crucial financial insights before deploying infrastructure changes, leading to more informed decisions and improved cost control. The successful launch demonstrated a significant improvement in user experience and transparency.
My Role
Design Systems, Prototyping, Responsive UX/UI, User Research, Wireframing
Results
• Solved key user pain point: lack of cost visibility
• Improved in-app collaboration and communication
• Improved navigation based on direct user feedback
Transforming the Terraform Run Details Page: A Redesign Showcase.
User Insights
User research played a crucial role in shaping the Cost Estimation feature for Terraform's Run Details page. I conducted interviews and usability testing with six users to identify key pain points and needs related to cost visibility and control. The research findings were distilled into actionable themes and recommendations that directly informed the design and development process.
This document presents the results of user research for Terraform's Cost Estimation feature, outlining key findings mapped to the Kano Model and identified user response patterns.
Before the redesign, the original Run Details page in Terraform presented significant usability challenges. The positioning of comments below the results, combined with the behavior of expanding result cards, forced users to scroll excessively and often hid critical discussion threads. This negatively impacted collaboration and efficient workflow analysis.
Wireframes showing the redesigned Run Details page in Terraform, featuring a right-side panel to ensure comments are always visible and easily accessible.
Always Accessible: Activity Panel
This section presents the redesigned Run Details page for Terraform, featuring a significant improvement in usability and information accessibility. A key change is the introduction of a fixed right-side panel dedicated to activity and comments, ensuring this crucial information remains visible at all times.
The redesign also involved updating various UI components for improved consistency and visual clarity, and strategically using background colors to enhance contrast and highlight the result cards.
The redesigned Terraform interface during a plan's "apply" phase, showcasing the integrated cost estimation card and a sticky comment action button at the bottom of the browser window for easy access.
The redesigned Run Details page improves user experience and efficiency by combining the comment form and primary action in an intuitive activity sidebar, eliminating a step in the workflow.
The redesigned side panel on Terraform's Run Details page provides a centralized hub for collaboration and information, showing all comments and run-related activity. With independent scrolling, the activity log remains accessible even when viewing lengthy results.
An early design exploration for the Terraform Run Details side panel, featuring a darker aesthetic with a black background and clearly defined activity sections. Although this concept received positive feedback from some stakeholders, it was ultimately not chosen for the final design.
Understanding User Needs: Cost Estimation Research
This document is a Request for Comments (RFC), the standard process for proposing changes at HashiCorp, which I authored to address design debt within Terraform's sub-navigation system. It outlines a plan to consolidate the existing five disparate secondary navigation styles into a single, unified breadcrumb system.
This change, informed by user research findings from the Run Details Cost Estimation project, aims to improve consistency, reduce user confusion, and enhance the overall user experience.
