Case Study, BlackBerry - UX / UI Design Case Study - BlackBerry

BlackBerry provides enterprises and governments with the software and services they need to secure the Internet of Things. The former hardware company is now focused of software, getting deeper into the security market they acquired Cylance, Inc. in order to secure endpoints and use their AI/ML technology to enhance their product suite.

Situation:

In order to rebrand Cylance into BlackBerry we needed a game plan to consolidate applications and create a single console for users to manage their security apps from. Also many technologies were in play and we needed to combine them while maintaining a good user experience and tech stack for development to share features and not duplicate work throughout.

Goals & Proposed Solution

Create a unified console merging the two companies applications to provide a Unified Endpoint Security (UES) console while maintaining two Design Systems and merging them over time.

Rebrand as BlackBerry
Create unified design system
Phase into BlackBerry system
Retire Cylance theme after merge

Discovery & Audit

Both companies were using (in some fashion) the same front-end framework, we nailed that down and found out who was further along in the component library (Cylance) and used that as the base. We then split the theme up into Cylance and BlackBerry themes so that both companies could keep producing features for their company while the integration to UES was happening on the side.

Design System Collaboration

We needed to get our teams on the same system, speaking the same language and having the same goal. So we first unified our tooling and selected Sketch to do the design work and InvisionDSM to showcase the design system and provide integration with developers and storybook.

We then shared libraries so we were all using the same components with different styleguide themes so that we could all work on Cylance+BlackBerry projects at the same time and switch over to BlackBerry when ready.

Logo Transition

Part of this transition consisted of my team creating new logos for new applications as well as converting the old Cylance look to fit into the BlackBerry product suite.

Outcome

Multiple products used the same framework and design system with different themes while releasing new features to customers and getting Marketing rolling with the brand transition and communicating to our users what was happening. We then released the new version of the cloud console from CylancePROTECT cloud, BlackBerry UEM to BlackBerry UES.

Engineering, Product and Design unified
Products able to share features
Faster development time
Less dependancy on Design