Adobe Admin Console
Providing fine-grain admin control to Adobe's enterprise customers
THE GAP
Adobe's enterprise customers reject Creative Cloud services because IT admins can't configure these services to their org's needs
ROLE
Product Design + Research
TEAM
Project Lead (100%), Design Lead (5%), Client Lead (30%), 18 cross-platform Adobe stakeholders
GOAL
UX Audits, Competitive Analysis, Design Prototyping
CONTEXT
I was an embedded vendor partner on Adobe's design team, coordinating across 18 stakeholders to solve a foundational gap in Creative Cloud Enterprise.
CHALLENGE
Admins had no granular control over the CC services they deployed. End-users had no way to request what they needed.
The result: low cloud service adoption — not a product problem, but an infrastructure one.
DIGGING INTO THE PROBLEM
First, I audited 200+ use cases across all 21 Adobe Cloud Services.
WHY
To understand what [control] really means for an admin, and gain clarity across different cloud service teams.
LOOKING OUTWARD
Benchmarked best-in-class admin console experiences and navigation patterns against Adobe.
WHY
Adobe CC is just one of the applications an enterprise admin has to manage in their org, so what can I learn about [controls] from other admin consoles?
UX STRATEGY
Painted the big picture flow of admins enabling new features and/or end-users requesting access to these features.
WHY
To align the larger stakeholder group before I started prototyping, and to show them how end users can drive service adoption.
EXAMPLE PROTOTYPE
How users can drive adoption by requesting permissions to share Adobe assets/files:
User requests admin permission to share a file
Admin reviews new request in the console
Admin fine-tunes sharing settings and resolves request (without having to navigate outside of request dialog)
User can now share the file
WHY
To show stakeholders the ease and control Adobe can bring to its enterprise admins and users, thereby establishing trust and increasing the cloud service adoption rate.
KEY IMPACT
30+
4 / 6
$100k+
future exploration budget awarded
LEARNING
Getting hands-on admin access to simulate the experience — without a formal study — was the scrappiest, most effective research call I made. Creative access to the problem often matters more than formal methodology.
