Authentication Intake Forms
Allowing platform administrators to effectively manage platform access by capturing, reviewing, and triaging information and attributes about users and groups.
Context
On Foundry, using user identity to grant platform access was traditionally managed through SAML and OpenID Connect integrations. Scenarios where identity providers lacked necessary user information required cumbersome authentication work arounds. In response to the evolving needs of key institutions like the DoD and Healthcare sectors, this effort transformed a clunky set of make shift solutions into a walk-up usable platform for admins to configure and triage platform access.
Project Structure
This product design was the culmination of multiple requests to natively build an enhanced Auth Intake. I proactively managed the overall vision for the new experience, and worked with a PM and three engineers to build it out over the course of 2 months.
Authentication Intake Forms
→ Inconsistent solutions across deployment teams
Forward-deployed engineers resorted to building multiple makeshift solutions. This led to inconsistent UX and and made it challenging to maintain a unified and reliable access control system across different customer environments.
→ Lack of administrative feedback
When platform access was denied, admin’s had no streamlined method to collaborate with users to resolve issues. The absence of a feedback loop made it difficult to address access problems promptly.
→ Absence of access request tracking and visibility
There was no mechanism to monitor the status of access requests, which led to opaque approval processes and longer wait times for users. Without visibility into request progress, both platform admins and users struggled to manage expectations.
User profiles + access request lifecycle
Product goal: Streamline user provisioning and access management by building a Foundry-native solution to enhance identity data collection.
Comprehensive Identity Verification
Empower admin users by offering highly customizable options to capture and verify user attributes.
Unified and native application
Establish consistent processes that are reliable and easily accessible in Foundry
Transparent processes
Increase user confidence by providing transparency and clear communication
Exploring different product angles + architecture explorations
At this stage, I closely collaborated with the PM to explore various perspectives and structural frameworks for the product. I employed rapid prototyping techniques to quickly visualize and iterate on these concepts:
—> Customizable forms to collect user attributes
Allows admins flexibility to tailor forms that capture the specific user attributes required for granting platform access.
It can accommodate for diverse needs of different institutions and workflows.
--> External data enrichment and validation
Integrating tools that automatically retrieve and verify additional user attributes from trusted external sources.
Only have to build an internal front end for tracking and transparency.
This product will not allow for customized attribute collections though.
--> External data enrichment and validation
Instead of assigning permissions individually, admin’s assign roles to users, and each role carries a set of permissions that align with the responsibilities of that role.
By linking roles and permissions, we simplify the back end
This version will not allow for too many customized attribute collections.
Platform access ecosystem: Supporting multi workflows
As we spoke to more admin users, it was clear that customizable attribute collection was the most effective way to fulfill the diverse platform access requests. So we went with customizable forms as the product direction.
Early ideations
As we spoke to more admin users, it was clear that customizable attribute collection was the most effective way to fulfill the diverse platform access requests. So we went with customizable forms as the product direction.
Takeaways from these explorations
While templates offer efficiency, they limit the flexibility to capture specific and complex user attributes, especially in fields like healthcare and the DoD.
Drag-and-drop form builder highlighted how an interactive UI can make form creation more engaging and accessible for admins with varying technical skills.
Placing the toolbar at the end of the form forced admins to scroll frequently, disrupting the workflow and slowing down the form creation process.
Authentication intake forms designs
A tool for customizable data collection
We designed the tool where admins can use it not just for better access provisioning using attributes but also a way to understand their users’ identity
Drag-and-drop builder
This would allow admins to easily add, arrange, and customize form fields without requiring technical expertise.
Flexible field types
Giving wide range of field types with flexible editable components will help accommodate various data collection needs for admins.
Nested questions
Forming a chain to the parent question
Instead of creating complex routes between pages, I simplified conditional logic by creating a parent <> child chain for nesting questions.
Ability to do inline form component customization
The parent <> child chain interaction also enabled for customizability, to allow admins to choose the component type for the nested question, inline.
Reviewing attribute changes
→ Monitoring attribute collection
Attributes is what grants users access to Palantir Foundry. They can be thought off as pieces of a key. Therefore it becomes crucial for admins to keep track of all the changes being made here
→ Reducing inessential attributes
Old systems recorded attributes in distributed and hacky ways. Our goal with the new design was to consolidate all the changes in one modal and reduce unnecessary attributes that would bloat the system.
Concise natural language description
Expressing attribute changes in straightforward sentences makes it easy for admins to understand the edits without needing to interpret complex data or technical jargon.
Emphasis on change detection and tracking
The design of the modal employs generous amounts of spacing to bring visual clarity and lower the cognitive overload.
Helpful visual status indicators
Colored tags are assigned to each change to provide immediate visual cues that help admins identify the type of change at a glance.
Redesigning triage and approvals
→ Monitoring attribute collection
Attributes is what grants users access to Palantir Foundry. They can be thought off as pieces of a key. Therefore it becomes crucial for admins to keep track of all the changes being made here
→ Streamlining comments and approval actions
Although a comments feature existed, it wasn't synchronized with the approval actions. This disconnect caused admins to spend extra time decomposing the abstraction, making us vulnerable to potential issues. The new designs solved this.
New approvals flow
Inline comments when reviewing data
A balanced layout of ‘Comments’ and ‘Review’ reduces cognitive dissonance, allowing admins to focus on reviewing submissions while having relevant comms inline for better contextuality.
Sectioned data for targeted review
By reviewing distinct sections, admins have flexibility and precise control by triaging specific parts of a submission independently rather than making a decision on entire request at once.
Specialized admin collaboration
By sectioning the submitted data, different specialist admins can now review parts of the submission based on their expertise, improving the accuracy and reliability of the process.
Comments
Message with clear identifiers and section tags
With every message having clear name, time and date stamps, we ensured consistency. Section tags indicating which part the message relates to, greatly improved contextual comms.
Integrated activity tracking
The comment section now doubles as an activity tracker. This holistic view simplifies tracking and provides an easy-to-follow timeline of all related events.
Less clutter and improved focus
By separating messages into different streams based on sections and providing filtering, users can concentrate on specific areas of interest without being distracted.
Reflection
This was my first project after joining Palantir, so jumping directly into designing for a complex spaces in Platform Security was a challenge! I learned a lot working with my PM, and quickly grew a lot of confidence in my ability to decomp technical spaces. Revamping the big parts existing design modules took a lot of persistence. I communicated the need through strong research.
Next steps
An beta version was released Q3 2024 and is being tested internally with non-critical team. It is soon expected to ship publicly as part of a wider Platform Security release.
Apart from full form customizability, the team is working towards implementing templates to help admins get a jumping off point