LM Exchange User Research

LM Exchange is a feature where users can create, install, and share their LogicModules with other LogicMonitor users. LogicModules are templates that define how the platform should collect, alert on, and configure data coming from the users’ Resources being monitored. In 2020, the beta for the new UI of LM Exchange had come out. However, our team consistently got negative feedback about the new UI. I served as the lead UX researcher on this project, where I was in charge of creating the protocol, conducting user interviews, analyzing the data, and creating design recommendations.

Dates

Worked with…

The Problem

LM Exchange had been implemented without any previous user research or usability testing- My team hadn’t existed when this feature was still being designed. The engineering and product team ended up designing the whole thing.

Users weren’t happy with the current implementation - Many users weren’t happy with the implementation, both internal and external. As a result, a lot users, particularly ITOps developers and monitoring engineers weren’t using LM Exchange. We had so many calls with customers, feedback tickets, etc but we weren’t sure what the biggest problems were.

The Goal

Research Questions

• What parts of LM Exchange need to be clarified for newer users?

• What features and functionality need to be improved upon first?

• What are some common pain points that users using LM Exchange encounter? What are they particularly confused about? What parts do they need more clarity?

Protocol

20 external users were interviewed about their experiences using the current implementation of LM Exchange, their main use cases for using LM Exchange, and any pain points they experienced while using it. All of these interviews took place on Zoom. These customers had a varying experience using LM Exchange. These customers were either ITOps developers, ITOps managers, or monitoring engineers. Below are the questions asked.

Questions about use of LM Exchange

• First of all, can you describe your expertise level with LM Exchange? How often do you use it?

• Can you walk me through how you use LM Exchange? Can you show me an example of how you’ve used it?

• If possible, could you show an example of a LogicModule you’ve made?

• What are the three main uses for LM Exchange?

• How many people on your team use LM Exchange?

• Have you ever publicly shared any modules? Why?

• Do you understand how the LogicModules in LM Exchange are different in Settings? How do you think they work together?

• Do you primarily add new LogicModules through LM Exchange or Settings? Why?

Questions about current design

• What about LM Exchange do you like? What interactions are particularly intuitive? Can you give me some examples in the context of your work?

• Did LM Exchange make your job easier? Can you give specific examples in the context of your job?

• What about LM Exchange do you think could be improved upon? Why? Can you give an example of it in the context of your work?

• Is there anything particularly confusing? Walk me through it? What don’t you understand?

• What features do you feel are missing? What would you like to add in?

• What features of LM Exchange do you think are unhelpful to the flow? Why? What would you replace them with?

• If you had a place where you could edit all of your modules, where would it be?

• Is there anything you would like to add upon?

After the interviews, I went back and analyzed my findings using an affinity diagram.

Main Findings

There were several pain points within the current implementation - Users found difficulty with using LM Exchange, as they encountered several pain points while trying to navigate and use the product.

“The UI isn’t easy to navigate”

Users cited difficulty with several features, such as, sorting their LogicModules, lack of access to support, and comparing the differences between versions of LogicModules. Users also cited difficulty with installing/uninstalling LogicModules and adding/editing LogicModules. Additionally, users cited that the current card view, lack of infinite scrolling, and lack of filtering options as detrimental to their ability to search for LogicModules.

There were several parts within the current implementation that were unclear to users - Overall, users needed further clarification on several parts within LM Exchange’s current implementation. These included, but not limited to terminology, how to add in a LogicModule, and the differences between types of packages. For example, one user cited that it took him and his team a while to learn LM Exchange. They did not understand what each tab represented and did not understand what the difference between each one was.

Users were hesitant to use additional features in LM Exchange - Users were hesitant to use LM Exchange as a whole due to not trusting third party LogicModules and the lack of transparency when updating a LogicModule. A majority of users did not download third party LogicModules that had been published to LM Exchange, due to the lack of credibility of the publishers. Most users were worried that they would have a security breach or corrupt their system if they installed a third-party LogicModule. One user was quoted saying:

“I’m reluctant to install third party DataSources. I would like to understand what it is doing and who made it before I install it”

Users were hesitant to use LM Exchange to update their LogicModules, due to the lack of visibility of what has been updated. Users were unable to choose what changes they wanted to update and which ones they wanted to skip over. More importantly, users were unable to tell if these updates would override their custom changes to their LogicModules. As a result of this lack of transparency, users were more likely to ignore updates to LogicModules, which could put their LogicModules at risk for security breaches or functionality.

What’s Next?

I took these design findings and handed them off to Stephanie (the UX designer in charge of this project) and Mike (The product manager), so they could create a plan to implement these recommendations and create designs for a newer, improved version of LM Exchange. The improvement of LM Exchange is an ongoing UX project that has been going on since June 2020. I remained involved in the initial ideation phases, until the project was fully passed onto Stephanie and Craig (one of my reports).

As of now, these design recommendations were implemented in a new version of LM Exchange that is currently in beta at the moment.