What is Symantec PKI Manager?

Symantec PKI Manager is a web based application that gives small to medium sized businesses access to a full PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) experience for managing digital certificates and users. It started out as an enterprise level suite of tools created by VeriSign in the 1990's, that required a lot of overhead and VeriSign support to implement and maintain. Around 2008 the decision was made to put all of these tools under one application and to make the experience of implementing and supporting it so streamlined and user friendly that it would appeal to companies that needed an information security platform, but could not afford the existing solution. During the initial design phase, my group was acquired by Symantec and the project continued under their ownership.

My Role

I was an interaction designer on an internal UX team at VeriSign when this project started. For the better part of the first year, I worked closely with our UX lead and visual UI designer to conduct UX research to better understand the technology and users. I participated in numerous user interviews, producing user flow diagrams based on my notes. I also helped created personas based on our user research.

After our initial burst of user research, my role was to figure out how these flows could be recreated within a UI system. I then created wireframes to help our visual designer develop the look and feel of the UI, which I then used to create working prototypes that we used for stakeholder reviews and approvals. After sign off, I created UI specifications and worked closely with our development team to implement the features. Eventually, I also owned all of the visual UI design as part of my responsibilities.