BRITTANY NICHOLS

ABOUT

RESUME

Interaction Design + User Interface

Less clicking, more insight— building a powerful sidebar

To reduce friction and improve task efficiency, we designed a dynamic sidebar that surfaces the most relevant information and actions into a single view—no extra clicks required. By centralizing context, we gave users the clarity they needed without disrupting their workflow. The result? Faster decision-making, higher adoption, and a more focused experience.

The tl;dr

Role + Timeline

UX Designer

November 2024 - March 2025

Situation

Partners were struggling to complete tasks efficiently due to fragmented information spread across multiple tabs and screens. Our platform lacked a centralized view, causing users to jump between pages to gather the context they needed. This friction negatively impacted workflow speed and user satisfaction, particularly for power users who needed to analyze or act on data quickly.

Task

Design a solution that would consolidate related information and actions into a single, easily accessible view—without overwhelming the interface. We aimed to reduce context switching, improve task efficiency, and enhance overall usability, especially for users who rely on speed and focus in high-stakes workflows.

Action

  • Design of a sidebar that will offer just-in-time data, recent activity, shortcuts, and next-step actions—all without navigating away from the main product dashboard.
  • Conducted user interviews and analyzed support feedback to identify top-priority context gaps
  • Mapped typical user workflows and designed wireframes and prototypes for multiple sidebar layouts
  • Facilitated usability testing to evaluate comprehension, hierarchy, and interaction patterns
  • Partnered with engineers to implement responsive behavior and dynamic content loading

Result

  • 85% user adoption within the first two weeks
  • 40% decrease in average task completion time
  • Significant drop in navigation-related support tickets
  • User feedback included comments like “This finally gives me everything I need in one place” and “Huge time-saver”

Impact at a glance

The interactive sidebar transformed how partner engage with our SaaS platform Dashboard— bringing clarity, speed, and confidence to their daily workflows. By surfacing the right information at the right time, we eliminated unnecessary navigation, boosted engagement, and delivered a smarter, more intuitive experience.

95%

satisfaction rate

Per our CSAT survey— citing improved clarity, reduced frustration, and better access to information.

80%

increase in activity

Partner engagement with key workflows on our Dashboard, indicating that the sidebar made features more discoverable and easier to act on.

21

hours saved/week

Of page load time— saving entire teams hours of manual clicking, tabbing, and searching each week.

Here it is in action 👇🏼

How did we do it?

Define the problem

By analyzing user feedback and tracked workflows, we found partners were losing time and focus navigating across pages to find information vital to their daily tasks. This friction slowed down decision-making, resolving errors, and led to missed context, especially for power users handling complex workflows.

Design with focus

We combined research, rapid iteration, and tight cross-functional collaboration:

  • Researched user behavior, support data, and key workflows to identify context gaps
  • Prototyped dynamic sidebar layouts with collapsible sections and clear content hierarchy
  • Tested and iterated with users to refine readability, relevance, and responsiveness
  • Partnered with engineering to ensure smooth performance and future scalability

Launch and measure success

By leveraging a customer satisfaction rating coupled with the option to provide qualitative feedback we’ve been able to successfully validate the sidebar's impact. This CSAT has been strategically triggered via Pendo software to ask the partner about their satisfaction with the sidebar feature soon after their first interaction providing us with an ongoing collection of feedback and helping us establish a baseline that we can track over time.

Design Breakdown

Insight Components

The sidebar brings the most critical device information and actions into immediate reach because these are the details users reference most often in the flow of their work. Here are the most essential components of the sidebar.

Alert: Provides a quick, detailed summary of why a device may be experiencing issues.

Device Overview: Maps device to vault, appliance, and client.

Health History: a visual overview of a device’s performance and stability over the past 30 days allowing users to quickly identify patterns or recurring problems.

AutoVerify: summarizes the most recent results for the protected system, including key validation checks and a BootVM screenshot to provide visual confirmation of system integrity.

Job History: a clear record of each job’s type, status, and completion timestamp to quickly review recent activity, identify failed or delayed jobs, and ensure that critical processes have completed successfully (item located outside of this frame)

BRITTANY NICHOLS

UX Designer based in Denver, CO

© 2025 All rights reserved.

BRITTANY NICHOLS

ABOUT

RESUME

Interaction Design + User Interface

Less clicking, more insight— building a powerful sidebar

To reduce friction and improve task efficiency, we designed a dynamic sidebar that surfaces the most relevant information and actions into a single view—no extra clicks required. By centralizing context, we gave users the clarity they needed without disrupting their workflow. The result? Faster decision-making, higher adoption, and a more focused experience.

The tl;dr

Role + Timeline

UX Designer

August 2024 - December 2024

Situation

Our current product vision lacks alignment with future growth and market trends, causing challenges in adoption, competitive positioning, clear understanding of where the product could or should go in the next 3–5 years. Leadership recognized the need for a high-level, aspirational concept that could inspire, align, and guide cross-functional teams toward a shared future.

Task

Create a conceptual north star unconstrained by current technological or resource limitations that would define the product’s ideal future state, improve strategic clarity, and provide design direction for scaling experiences to realign the overall product vision with future business goals.

Action

  • Conducted stakeholder interviews and workshops to surface business goals and product ambitions
  • Compiled existing research and journey maps to identify key themes and opportunities for innovation
  • Mapped current pain points and problem areas across workflows and personas, reframing these into actionable problem statements and drafted future-state user journeys to explore ideal workflows
  • Designed and delivered a product vision readout

Result

  • A new product vision statement encapsulating the desired 3–5 year outcome that captured both user and business needs
  • Proposed future-state navigation and information architecture to reflect a scalable and intuitive experience that would streamline existing workflows to reduce complexity and support potential feature growth
  • Stronger alignment across product, design, and engineering leadership on long-term goals

Impact at a glance

The interactive sidebar transformed how partner engage with our SaaS platform Dashboard— bringing clarity, speed, and confidence to their daily workflows. By surfacing the right information at the right time, we eliminated unnecessary navigation, boosted engagement, and delivered a smarter, more intuitive experience.

95%

satisfaction rate

Per our CSAT survey— citing improved clarity, reduced frustration, and better access to information.

80%

increase in activity

Partner engagement with key workflows on our Dashboard, indicating that the sidebar made features more discoverable and easier to act on.

21

hours saved/week

Of page load time— saving entire teams hours of manual clicking, tabbing, and searching each week.

Here it is in action 👇🏼

How did we do it?

Define the problem

By analyzing user feedback and tracked workflows, we found partners were losing time and focus navigating across pages to find information vital to their daily tasks. This friction slowed down decision-making, resolving errors, and led to missed context, especially for power users handling complex workflows.

Design with focus

We combined research, rapid iteration, and tight cross-functional collaboration:

  • Researched user behavior, support data, and key workflows to identify context gaps
  • Prototyped dynamic sidebar layouts with collapsible sections and clear content hierarchy
  • Tested and iterated with users to refine readability, relevance, and responsiveness
  • Partnered with engineering to ensure smooth performance and future scalability

Launch and measure success

By leveraging a customer satisfaction rating coupled with the option to provide qualitative feedback we’ve been able to successfully validate the sidebar's impact. This CSAT has been strategically triggered via Pendo software to ask the partner about their satisfaction with the sidebar feature soon after their first interaction providing us with an ongoing collection of feedback and helping us establish a baseline that we can track over time.

Design Breakdown

Insight Components

The sidebar brings the most critical device information and actions into immediate reach because these are the details users reference most often in the flow of their work. Here are the most essential components of the sidebar.

Device Overview: Maps device to vault, appliance, and client.

Alert: Provides a quick, detailed summary of why a device may be experiencing issues.

Health History: a visual overview of a device’s performance and stability over the past 30 days allowing users to quickly identify patterns or recurring problems.

AutoVerify: summarizes the most recent results for the protected system, including key validation checks and a BootVM screenshot to provide visual confirmation of system integrity.

Job History: a clear record of each job’s type, status, and completion timestamp to quickly review recent activity, identify failed or delayed jobs, and ensure that critical processes have completed successfully (item located outside of this frame)

BRITTANY NICHOLS

UX Designer based in Denver, CO

© 2025 All rights reserved.

BRITTANY NICHOLS

ABOUT

RESUME

Interaction Design + User Interface

Less clicking, more insight— building a powerful sidebar

To reduce friction and improve task efficiency, we designed a dynamic sidebar that surfaces the most relevant information and actions into a single view—no extra clicks required. By centralizing context, we gave users the clarity they needed without disrupting their workflow. The result? Faster decision-making, higher adoption, and a more focused experience.

The tl;dr

Role + Timeline

UX Designer

November 2024 - March 2025

Situation

Partners were struggling to complete tasks efficiently due to fragmented information spread across multiple tabs and screens. Our platform lacked a centralized view, causing users to jump between pages to gather the context they needed. This friction negatively impacted workflow speed and user satisfaction, particularly for power users who needed to analyze or act on data quickly.

Task

Design a solution that would consolidate related information and actions into a single, easily accessible view—without overwhelming the interface. We aimed to reduce context switching, improve task efficiency, and enhance overall usability, especially for users who rely on speed and focus in high-stakes workflows.

Action

  • Design of a sidebar that will offer just-in-time data, recent activity, shortcuts, and next-step actions—all without navigating away from the main product dashboard.
  • Conducted user interviews and analyzed support feedback to identify top-priority context gaps
  • Mapped typical user workflows and designed wireframes and prototypes for multiple sidebar layouts
  • Facilitated usability testing to evaluate comprehension, hierarchy, and interaction patterns
  • Partnered with engineers to implement responsive behavior and dynamic content loading

Result

  • 85% user adoption within the first two weeks
  • 40% decrease in average task completion time
  • Significant drop in navigation-related support tickets
  • User feedback included comments like “This finally gives me everything I need in one place” and “Huge time-saver”

Impact at a glance

The interactive sidebar transformed how partner engage with our SaaS platform Dashboard— bringing clarity, speed, and confidence to their daily workflows. By surfacing the right information at the right time, we eliminated unnecessary navigation, boosted engagement, and delivered a smarter, more intuitive experience.

95%

satisfaction rate

Per our CSAT survey— citing improved clarity, reduced frustration, and better access to information.

80%

increase in activity

Partner engagement with key workflows on our Dashboard, indicating that the sidebar made features more discoverable and easier to act on.

21

hours saved/week

Of page load time— saving entire teams hours of manual clicking, tabbing, and searching each week.

Here it is in action 👇🏼

How did we do it?

Define the problem

By analyzing user feedback and tracked workflows, we found partners were losing time and focus navigating across pages to find information vital to their daily tasks. This friction slowed down decision-making, resolving errors, and led to missed context, especially for power users handling complex workflows.

Design with focus

We combined research, rapid iteration, and tight cross-functional collaboration:

  • Researched user behavior, support data, and key workflows to identify context gaps
  • Prototyped dynamic sidebar layouts with collapsible sections and clear content hierarchy
  • Tested and iterated with users to refine readability, relevance, and responsiveness
  • Partnered with engineering to ensure smooth performance and future scalability

Launch and measure success

By leveraging a customer satisfaction rating coupled with the option to provide qualitative feedback we’ve been able to successfully validate the sidebar's impact. This CSAT has been strategically triggered via Pendo software to ask the partner about their satisfaction with the sidebar feature soon after their first interaction providing us with an ongoing collection of feedback and helping us establish a baseline that we can track over time.

Design Breakdown

Insight Components

The sidebar brings the most critical device information and actions into immediate reach because these are the details users reference most often in the flow of their work. Here are the most essential components of the sidebar.

Device Overview: Maps device to vault, appliance, and client.

Alert: Provides a quick, detailed summary of why a device may be experiencing issues.

Health History: a visual overview of a device’s performance and stability over the past 30 days allowing users to quickly identify patterns or recurring problems.

AutoVerify: summarizes the most recent results for the protected system, including key validation checks and a BootVM screenshot to provide visual confirmation of system integrity.

Job History: a clear record of each job’s type, status, and completion timestamp to quickly review recent activity, identify failed or delayed jobs, and ensure that critical processes have completed successfully (item located outside of this frame)