Gloo is an enterprise-grade service mesh and API gateway platform used by platform engineers to manage complex Kubernetes environments. As the product evolved, the UI accumulated usability debt: visual noise, accessibility gaps, inconsistent hierarchy, and limited support for observability-driven workflows.
This project was a full-platform redesign, covering navigation, dashboards, graphs, and system surfaces, with a focus on clarity, accessibility, and decision speed for technical users operating at scale.
My Role
Led end-to-end UX and UI redesign
Defined new visual language and design system foundations
Collaborated with product, engineering, and DevRel
Validated solutions against real-world platform workflows
Problems Identified
Cognitive Overload
Dense screens with weak visual hierarchy, high information density without prioritization, and limited scannability.
Accessibility Gaps
Insufficient contrast, small typography, tight spacing, and reliance on color-only state signaling.
Fragmented UX
Inconsistent navigation, poor mental model alignment between views, and lack of continuity between monitoring and configuration.
KPI-driven layout with clear prioritization, embedded trends, and actionable alerts surfaced immediately above the fold.
Streamlined topology with clear node hierarchy, inline performance metrics (latency/errors), and spatial grouping.
Measured & Expected KPI Impact
Time to identify issue
~6–8 min vs ~3–4 min ↓ 40–50%
Task success rate
~78%vs ~92% +14 pp
Error misinterpretation
High vs Low ↓ ~35%
Accessibility
Partial vs WCAG-aligned +100%
User Satisfaction (CSAT)
~3.6 / 5 vs ~4.4 / 5 +22%
Why This Matters
For platform engineers, every second matters. Improving clarity, hierarchy, and accessibility directly translates into faster incident response, lower cognitive fatigue, and higher trust in the platform.
Outcome
The redesigned Gloo platform scales visually with system complexity and aligns enterprise usability with modern design standards. It demonstrates how design maturity directly impacts platform effectiveness, not just aesthetics.
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Posted Jan 3, 2026
It was a full-platform redesign, covering IA, dashboards, flows, with a focus on clarity, accessibility, and decision speed for tech users operating at scale.