Portfolio website of Harish T P

HPE OneSphere

HPE OneSphere: Simplifying Kubernetes Onboarding on Bare-Metal

From 6 minutes → 2 minutes in onboarding time
Your Role: Lead UX Designer (Research → Prototyping → Testing → Final Design)

Overview

HPE OneSphere is Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s cloud management platform, designed to simplify hybrid cloud management—spanning on-premises infrastructure and public/private clouds.

In this project, the focus was on a critical pain point: onboarding Kubernetes clusters on bare-metal servers. The process was manual, complex, and prone to errors, causing delays and limiting adoption.

The Challenge`

“Onboarding Kubernetes on bare-metal was too complex.”

  • Complex: too many manual steps

  • Unclear: master nodes not easily identified

  • Time-consuming: ~6 minutes, error-prone

Project Goal

Statement: Simplify Kubernetes onboarding → faster, transparent, and error-free.

My Role

  • UX Research & Persona Refinement
  • Competitive Analysis
  • Task Flow Mapping
  • Wireframing & Prototyping
  • User Testing (Preference, Moderated, A/B)
  • Final UI Design

Research & Insights

Method

Stakeholder interviews, user interviews, competitor benchmarking

Insight

Competitors (VMware Tanzu, RedHat OpenShift, GKE, etc.) automated flows, while OneSphere felt manual and unclear.

Competitive Analysis

Persona

Task flow

Previous flow: Multiple manual steps → error-prone.
New flow: Automated node attachment + clear master node designation.

Wireframes & Testing

Process

  1. Preference testing (which design do users prefer?)

  2. Moderated testing (can users complete the task?)

  3. A/B testing (compare iterations)

User Stats

  • 25 users tested
  • 23 found it easiest
  • 2 users confused about master nodes → improved with clearer role indicators
Users tested
0
Users felt its the easiest method
0
Users unable to find which nodes were master nodes
0
mintes to complete the task
0

Few Verbatiums from the test

Attaching nodes was relatively quick and easy. I had no issues with figuring out how to go about doing this.
I believe that this would be the absolute easiest way to attach nodes, It is quicker and much more efficient than the previous method.
I believe all three nodes were attached as a master node to the cluster. I could be wrong but this is what I can recall

Even though the process was easy for the users, 2 users were unable to understand which node was attached as the master node.  So we went back to the drawing board and made some changes to address that and tested it again. 

Final Designs

  • One-click node attachment.

  • Automated master node creation.

  • Clear indicators for node roles.

  • Simplified update flow.

Impact

  • Time savings: Reduced onboarding from ~6 min to ~2 min.

  • Confidence: 92% of tested users felt “easiest method yet.”

  • Adoption: Increased frequency of successful Kubernetes deployments.

Reflection

This project pushed me to:

  • Translate deeply technical workflows into simple, intuitive designs.

  • Balance automation with transparency, ensuring admins felt in control.

  • Leverage testing insights to iterate quickly and land on a solution that worked in the real world.

If I continued, I’d explore:

  • AI-driven recommendations for node assignment.

  • Deeper monitoring integration to further reduce admin effort.