Maurice Matthew

Overview

Role

  • Product Designer

Tools

  • Figma

Timeline

  • Whole design process: 1 months

Accurate device updates with Apple's Declarative Device Mangement

During Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference '23, Apple released a new protocol called Declarative Device Management. This new protocol, running on iOS 16 or later allows devices to be proactive, and autonomously report their status. This protocol significantly reduces network traffic, decreases the latency of device status updates, and empowers the device to maintain compliant states even when offline.

Declarative

  • Prepared for all changes and outcomes

  • Minimized impact on your services downtime

  • Detect odd activities and take proactive measures

  • Save costs on IT maintenance and personel

Reactive

  • Unprepared for abropt changes

  • Service will be interrupted during troubleshooting

  • Waste time on resolving complicated issues

  • Spend more on technical support and travel fare

How might we leverage DDM to allow autonomous device reporting and configuration updates for IT Admin?

DDM protocol challenges MobiControl's system architecture. MobiControl, being a platform agnostic product does not prioritize one platform over another unless forced, although the goal is also to entice users building Apple profiles to utilize the tools under this new framework. Therefore, this challenges development to weave this protocol within the existing system

Users can now configure their devices autonomously or reactively

By allowing users to create DDM as a Profile type, development is able to leverage existing front-end components as opposed to breaking and reconstructing the current Profile architecture. With this, DDM offerings in MobiControl are able to hit the market sooner, and users can begin to use it's benefits.

Choose between the old Reactive and new DDM

  • Allow the user to make a choice between DDM (new) and Reactive (old) protocol types
  • Inform the user of the difference between protocol types

DDM magic under the scenes

  • DDM Profile utilizes Reactive structure, while only making minor additions to cut down on development costs
  • Reactive Profile structure stays the same

Stakeholder interview

  • Briefed on DDM and it's 4 tools; configurations, assets, activations, management

  • 1 week design time for phase 1, with multiple options for point of entry

  • Benefits to user

  • Time to market brings technical constraints

  • DDM as a concept will likely scale to other platforms within the future

Exploring user flows

Option 1 – Add assets to configurations section since they work hand in hand

Option 2 – Add DDM tools as additional tabs in profile creation dialog

Iterate and test

From wireframes to a working prototype - the flow went through rounds iterations, with each time receiving feedback from senior stakeholders before landing on a final design.

Learing outcomes

The experience of utilizing external frameworks and weave it into a system in a way that makes sense to current users

Reflection

Originaly the plan to integrate DDM was to group all tools together for the user to manage. After pulling the different tools apart and thinking about each tool individually, it was evident that this was not the right direction and each tool could be mapped to different configuration settings within MobiControl.

Green Bean

Dashboards