Simplifying enterprise security in CryptoHub
Overview
Futurex provides enterprise data security to organizations where encryption is mission-critical. CryptoHub, their flagship platform, unifies key management, data protection, and compliance into a single solution, but before customers can use any of it, they have to get through provisioning: the initial setup that takes a new CryptoHub from powered-on to operational.
I led the end-to-end redesign of this experience as a guided wizard, partnering with documentation, QA, and engineering to make an eight-step setup feel intuitive for first-time administrators, while building on the design system I owned across Futurex’s applications.
Opportunity
Setup is a customer’s first experience with CryptoHub, and it was the hardest part of the product.
Provisioning is the very first hands-on moment a customer has with CryptoHub after purchase. The legacy flow walked administrators through eight sequential, jargon-heavy steps (security modes, major keys, licensing, clustering) with no sense of progress, no guidance on which steps were essential, and no way to defer configuration. Customers regularly leaned on documentation and support just to get the device operational, delaying time-to-value on a product they’d already bought.
Defining the problem
Auditing the legacy provisioning flow and pairing it with what I heard from the field, three core problems emerged:
Too many steps, too early. Setup demanded eight sequential configurations (networking tabs, NTP servers, backup schedules, cluster settings) before users could touch the product. Most of these decisions weren’t necessary to get a working CryptoHub, but nothing told users that. Skip buttons existed, but there was no guidance on what was safe to skip.
The product spoke Futurex, not user. Steps carried internal names like “Default Login,” and the Major Keys screen presented six bare acronyms, each marked “Not Loaded,” with no explanation of what they were or which mattered now. Users had to arrive already fluent in the product they were setting up for the first time.
Steps in the wrong order. Users created login credentials before selecting a security mode, even though the security mode determines the password requirements. The flow’s sequence didn’t match the system’s own logic, let alone the user’s expectations.
Underneath all three: no sense of progress, no framing of what “done” looked like, and a first experience that pushed customers toward documentation and support instead of through the product.
The problem: New CryptoHub administrators, often encountering the product for the first time, had to navigate a long, jargon-heavy, unordered setup with no guidance on what was essential, delaying the moment their device became operational.
The goal
Redesign provisioning into a guided wizard that takes a new CryptoHub from powered on to operational with confidence and in fewer steps. That meant clearly communicating the purpose of each step, combining or deferring non-essential configuration to post-setup settings, and reducing dependence on documentation and support, all without compromising the security and compliance requirements (FIPS, PCI) on which the product is built.
Discovery and research
Provisioning happens inside clients’ security environments, so I had no direct access to customers. I built the research foundation on the people closest to them. I gathered insights from David, our solutions architect, who worked alongside customers regularly and shared the patterns he saw in the field, then brought together QA, documentation, front-end engineering, and another designer for a structured working session: the teams who deal with the downstream consequences of a confusing setup.
We mapped every step of the legacy flow, defined requirements for each, and pressure-tested the whole process against three questions: which steps could be eliminated or combined, where users hit hurdles, and how each step actually serves the user. The answers became the blueprint for the redesign: three essential steps up front, everything else deferred.
The solution
