Case Study / Circonus / 2020

Circonus Observability Product & Brand.

Product UI and marketing design for an observability platform used by SREs, DevOps teams, data scientists, and technical operations teams.

Industry

Startup
Observability SaaS

Role

Senior Designer
Individual Contributor

Year

2020

Outcome

Data viz UI modernization
Website and brand system

Circonus observability UI — Observability dashboard UI direction.

Circonus is a monitoring and observability solution used by data scientists, Site Reliability Engineers, and technical operations teams to understand and predict IT system health.

The role sat between product and marketing, with practical ownership across dashboard UI modernization, digital brand systems, and go-to-market design.

I was hired as Senior Designer to work across product and marketing. The brief was broad: modernize a dense data visualization interface, extend the brand into a stronger digital system, and create materials that helped technical buyers understand the platform.

Methods & Technologies

User Interviews
Accessibility Reviews
Stakeholder Interviews
A/B Testing
SEO
Google Analytics
WordPress
Bootstrap

01 · Product

Data visualization UI for observability workflows.

The product work focused on updating and modernizing the dashboard experience for deeply technical users. In observability tools, interface clarity is operationally important: teams need to scan system state, find patterns, and move toward root cause without fighting the UI.

The redesign emphasized clearer presentation, stronger hierarchy, accessible color palettes for color-blind users, and more disciplined component patterns for SRE, DevOps, and analyst workflows.

Product needs

Dense metrics and system-health views
Clearer scan paths for technical users
Color-blind accessible palettes
Reusable dashboard UI components

Design principle 01

Make system health easier to scan.

Dense information can work when hierarchy, labels, and interaction patterns stay disciplined.

Design principle 02

Design color as a support, not a crutch.

Palette and component choices needed to support color-blind accessibility while preserving the precision expected by technical users.

02 · Digital Brand

Website, blog, and brand system.

I redesigned Circonus.com from the ground up using WordPress and Bootstrap to create a custom theme that could support product storytelling, technical content, and marketing campaigns.

The blog was also redesigned with custom PHP to display posts and create relational suggested reading, helping visitors move through deeper technical content instead of landing on isolated articles.

Digital outputs

Custom WordPress/Bootstrap theme
Blog redesign and related reading
SEO and analytics instrumentation
Reusable landing-page patterns

Circonus landing page direction — Marketing landing page direction.

03 · Go To Market

Campaign and collateral system.

Alongside product and website work, I designed campaign materials to support adoption, lead generation, sales conversations, and conference presence.

The collateral system translated Circonus into formats a technical sales team could use repeatedly: banner ads, targeted landing pages, email campaign templates, brochures, conference swag, and sales-support materials.