QuickNIST

Work Type

Freelance

Role

UX/UI Designer

Project Overview

Introduction & Problem

QuickNIST is a compliance management SaaS Application used by companies with a need to prove their compliance with cybersecurity best practices. This is currently done by implementing what’s referred to as a cybersecurity framework, which is a published set of best practices that are referred to individually as controls. QuickNIST has expanded this concept to map best-practice controls to individual IT services (such as Email service, SCM, Slack, ticketing, etc.) where the controls are asserted for each specific IT service rather than by the company as a whole. This more granular approach is far more useful in that it can be used to automatically find gaps and produce useful policy documentation such as a roadmap for future project implementation. Unlike it’s competitors, QuickNIST presents its questions as a list and allows users to filter for assertions, services, or both in order to limit the length of the list.

The problem remained that customers must answer hundreds to thousands of individual assertions in order to complete a compliance effort. An expert who knows both the platform and all the answers top of mind could perform the work in about four hours in the current interface. We needed to fix that by either making the process faster, or by breaking it up into multiple and faster sessions over time.

Methodology

My Role

My role was to improve the workflow model in which users (auditors) would view and manage their outstanding items to be completed in order to achieve compliance standards. I also updated the UI by providing a branding kit, a design system and an updated logo.

Tools

Figma

Research

When I first joined the efforts at QuickNIST the team had already developed a beta version, which allowed for me to study the platform. I was able to dive deep to find it’s weaknesses and improve upon them. Furthermore, I conducted a round of competitive analysis, looking at several other compliance managing tools - and even further I looked at popular task management tools like Asana and Trello to draw inspiration from. I conducted several interviews with two of the owners of QuickNIST, and had four rounds of design reviews before final hand off.

Design

deliverables

Seen above is the dashboard used by QuickNIST users. The key with this dashboard was to show as much data as possible, to let the user know how far along they were in the process. One of the major upgrades done with this project was the introduction of the mobile web app - which allowed users to quickly and easily access the program and chip away at their compliance progress while on the go.

Seen above is a view into a particular service item. Companies can have many options here depending on the services they provide within their industries. It was important that within this view, the user would be able to read the compliance items to be completed, by whom, when they were assigned, their status and any applicable notes.

Logo

branding

The last tool the team needed was a succinct and easy to use brand guide - including colors, type styles and a few scalable components (tables, charts, cards, etc.) to be used on desktop and on their mobile web app.

Conclusion

After the work I did with the QuickNIST team, they were able to take their product from beta testing to launch. I’m happy to share that the QuickNIST platform and consulting services produce extremely accurate results in the shortest possible time, which frees companies from regulatory audit anxiety.

To learn more about QuickNIST visit their website here.