To lead the Data-Protection-As-A-Service market with blockchain technology, we are building Oasis Parcel, a privacy-first data governance tool that isolates and protects your most sensitive data. Our goal is to empower developers and companies by helping them build secure and compliant infrastructure.
Parcel GA is going to be released soon, already used by a few of our customers including Nebula, The Music Fund, Castalise, and many more.
MY ROLE
Lead designer – discovery and ideation, lo-fi design exploration, interaction design and prototyping
TEAM
Naheed Vora, Product Manager Charlie Jacobson, Product Manager Nikhil Sharma, Full-stack Engineer Luka Jeran, Front-end Engineer Xi Zhang, Front-end Engineer
+ many more back-end engineers ❤️
To lead the Data-Protection-As-A-Service market with blockchain technology, we are building Oasis Parcel, a privacy-first data governance tool that isolates and protects your most sensitive data. Our goal is to empower developers and companies by helping them build secure and compliant infrastructure.
Parcel GA has been recently released, used by a few of our customers including Nebula, The Music Fund, Castalise, and many more.
MY ROLE
Lead and solo designer – discovery and ideation, lo-fi design exploration, interaction design and prototype
TEAM
Naheed Vora, Product Manager Charlie Jacobson, Product Manager Nikhil Sharma, Full-stack Engineer Luka Jeran, Front-end Engineer Xi Zhang, Front-end Engineer
+ many more back-end engineers ❤️
PROBLEM
A ton of data collections owned and held by a group are not fully utilized or accessible due to data privacy and security concerns. This problem, so-called “Data silo” hinders the process of gleaning deep, actionable insights from organizational data and creates a barrier to a holistic view of company data.
Parcel is designed to address this problem and help organizations getting better benefit of data with blockchain enabled Parcel platform, which allows them to securely manage and share their data internally or externally.
We believed there was an opportunity to best utilize our unique decentralized blockchain network and technology. To prove this, we’ve conducted customer research and tested various hypothesis. Eventually, we were able to narrow down the scope and also figure out what problem space we will tackle in particular.
“We want to give our users more control over their data in a way that it’s as least disruptive as possible. This is to differentiate our product since data security market is emerging and the number of people concerned about their data is increasing.” — NEBULA GENOMICS
“Traditional security framework is insufficient. We'd like to make clear to our consumers that they don't need to worry about data security.” — HU.MAN.AI
“Pharma companies mount on a wealth of non-exploited data. Violating data privacy and patient consents collected during clinical trials could cost pharma companies millions of dollars in legal settlements.” — CASTALISE
Permissions
Above is Parcel App Create flow where user can create permissions. Here, the user is creating 2 analysis permissions, ML and Genome analysis.
Steward users, once chose to manage their app data on Oasis blockchain network, can either allow or deny to each permission.
Above is Parcel App Create flow where user can create permissions. Here, the user is creating 2 analysis permissions, ML and Genome analysis.
Steward users, once chose to manage their app data on Oasis blockchain network, can either allow or deny to each permission.
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Onboarding checklist
After sign-up, users are moving through our quick start guide with a checklist which allows them to easily understand what they can do in Parcel after they first land. We wanted to give them an ability to check or close each of these items once complete. It’s a basic tracking on “closing” of items. Often dev products can be boring and formal but we wanted to add a little bit of fun elements with which we can welcome new users.
Create my app
App creation is one of the most important flows of Parcel because this is where we need to make sure our developer users understand: • what they can create with Parcel, • what ‘permission’ piece is (one of the big main features of Parcel), • how Parcel is related to Steward, • how and which of their app info is going to be displayed to their end-users—an identity who grants their data to app developer— on Steward, • and how they need to tailor their app info for their end-users.
My app page
My app page contains 3 sections respectively overview, user data, and audit history. In user data section, you can find all user dataset whether you uploaded as admin or your end-user or partners uploaded. Audit history is an unforgeable record/proof of by who and when the user dataset is accessed. The example above presents a case where you can see the dataset is analyzed (2 types of analysis that are tied to the app permission).
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USER DATA
A data table with all user dataset uploaded as part of this app. Dataset is either permission granted or revoked.
AUDIT HISTORY
A single source of all data access activity history. Only app admin can view these logs.
USER DATA
A data table with all user dataset uploaded as part of this app. Dataset is either permission granted or revoked.
AUDIT HISTORY
A single source of all data access activity history. Only app admin can view these logs.
RESEARCH
An extensive study on our customer research showed us that there's a clear user needs for secure data sharing and management. A majority of our customers we'd talked to raised the issue of not being able to efficiently manage data, utilize sensitive data, anti-tamper data access history, etc. Some of the main research takeaways: 1. Enterprises do not trust their partners when it comes to sharing sensitive data. 2. Restricting use of the data once shared is a necessary function for some enterprises to share data externally. 3. Enterprises are worried about insider threats from cloud provider platforms. 4. We can reduce time for multiple stakeholders to collaborate with sensitive data from 4 weeks to less than a week.
OPPORTUNITY
The opportunity for Parcel was specific: we could be a blockchain data management and sharing tool. Many of our customers wanted to share sensitive data without exposing it and track the history of data access. We prioritized a few key features that would be most valuable and feasible, that would make Parcel address main users pain points. • Ability to share and analyze data in a privacy-preserving environment. • User permissions (aka consents) to allow or deny for data access and the status of user permissions. • Immutable audit record to track and monitor the status of all user data and actions taken. • Invite and collaborate with the team to manage the app and user data.
Exploration and iteration
Initially I explored many different ways a user would be able to create an app with a solid understanding of the product concept and permission piece: from layouts, features, and UIs including progress bar, hover-over info message, permission preview, app customization, etc. As part of my process, I weighed the pros and cons of each.
We wanted to support multiple permissions per app, this was technically not feasible in the time span we had. Although the easiest way to design it was combining 'app info' and 'permission' sections in one page (because with single permission, the whole page won't be heavy-weight), I resorted to two separate sections: eventually we'll support multiple permissions per app and there's not a big difference between 'combined' and 'separate' in terms of technical implementation.
APP CREATE FORM DESIGN
Throughout the project, requirements changed and new constraints were uncovered. Early on I learned that the permission/consent piece should present enough information about what it is, how it works, and how it'll be displayed to their end-users on Steward, since it's pretty new concept in tech domain. I explored different layouts, UIs
Permission Interactions
Part of this project was also taking into consideration the entire permission creating and reviewing experience.
OUTCOME
This was a really exciting and fun project for me to work on as it provides real value, involved a ton of research, and detailed interaction work. However, shifting priorities and changing roadmaps have delayed the launch of this feature. Still, I learned some important takeaways from this project related to product and business processes.
How to adapt to changing requirements
New timelines, resourcing issues, and reprioritization meant the scope of the project was constantly changing. I had to adapt to those changes and still deliver the best design in time with tight deadlines.
Always fight for good UX
I had to work under very strict technical constraints, but still fight for what I believe is essential to having a good user experience.
Don’t overpromise and underdeliver
I learned how to define a true MVP vs. something that is simply not realistic and therefore not shippable.
Choosing what we won’t do
There were many great use cases we could tackle with a rich feature set. However, every single one was costly or unrealistic. I had to determine where the real value was for Parcel so we did not spread ourselves too thin.
AND MORE...
Parcel GA (General Availability) is happening soon! When it's launched, it'll be time to...
• Actively gather user feedback, • Synthesize user feedback and translate it into design takeaways, • Re-prioritize work items that have been in our backlogs, • And make it more scalable, more multi-device friendly.
