Cloud Cost Management Redesign: Removing Barriers to Activation

A comprehensive redesign of OCI’s cost management experience that reduced complexity by 75%, eliminated critical access barriers, and directly improved activation, adoption, and retention.

Redesigned Cost Management Dashboard: Simplified cost tracking and analysis experience — cutting process steps by 75%, removing access barriers, and boosting adoption across teams.

Industry

Industry

Cloud Infrastructure / FinOps

Timeline

Timeline

2022 - 2023

My Role

My Role

Lead UX Designer

Introduction

Managing cloud costs is one of the biggest challenges for enterprise customers. At Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), our generic tagging system was designed to allocate spend across resources — but in practice, it created friction at every step.

Users faced a 40-step disjointed process across three services, broken access permissions that blocked finance personas, and misleading cost data from incorrectly tagged resources. This was more than an inconvenience — it directly impacted user activation rates, platform stickiness, and churn.

I led the end-to-end redesign of this cost management experience, replacing generic tags with dedicated Cost Categories. The new solution cut the process down to 10 streamlined steps, introduced multiple creation methods for different personas, and improved activation by enabling finance and engineering teams to collaborate effectively.

The problem

Through audits, research, and workshops, we uncovered four critical pain points:

Omics researchers relied on multiple disconnected tools for processing and analysis, creating friction and slowing down research.

Broken access model

Users had to navigate Governance, Identity, and Billing just to create and apply tags.

Disjointed 40-step process

Incorrectly tagged or untagged resources meant misleading cost reports and misallocated budgets.

Inaccurate data

Fewer than 8% of users actively tagged resources, with most resorting to Excel or custom Terraform scripts.

Low adoption

The business impact was clear: without reliable cost management, customers couldn’t realise OCI’s value — a key driver of churn.

Discovery & Definition

I launched the project with a kickoff workshop to align stakeholders on vision, goals, and scope. The session helped us frame a clear problem statement and consolidate known user insights.

I then created a UX plan outlining:

  • Personas and scenarios (finance managers, cloud architects, engineers)

  • Use cases and flows

  • Information architecture for a new cost category section

  • Wireframes, mockups, and prototypes

  • Iterative usability testing

This plan secured buy-in from product and engineering, addressed misconceptions that UX would slow delivery, and set clear milestones for delivery.

Discovery & Definition Timeline: Kickoff workshop aligned cross-functional teams around goals, scope, and user needs. This UX plan laid the groundwork — covering personas, IA, flows, and test strategy — and helped secure delivery buy-in early.

Research

Competitive Analysis

I benchmarked four major competitors (AWS, Azure, GCP, and FinOps tools) to understand terminology, IA, and patterns.

Key Findings

  • “Cost categories” was the industry-standard term

  • Most tools supported logic statements or bulk uploads

  • Flexibility existed, but required a strong understanding of allocation rules

Generative Research

I ran 6 interviews and contextual inquiries with finance users, architects, and engineers.

Insights included:

  • Finance personas lacked console access

  • Excel was the primary planning tool

  • Engineers relied on Terraform / custom scripts

  • Strong demand for bulk updates (tagging 400+ resources at once)

  • Need to retroactively reallocate costs

  • Desire for anticipatory naming suggestions

Design Execution

Analysing the Existing UX

The original flow required ~40 steps across three services. Key pain points included:

  • No bulk editing (resources had to be tagged one by one)

  • Full compartments were tagged instead of subsets

  • No way to untag or retroactively adjust categories

  • Incorrect tagging led to misleading dashboards

Redesigning the Journey

By consolidating flows into a dedicated Cost Categories section, we cut the process from 40 steps to 10 — a 75% reduction in complexity.

Before: 40 steps across 3 services

After: 10 streamlined steps in 1 service

Redesigned User Journey: The original tagging flow spanned 40+ steps across three services. By consolidating tasks into a dedicated cost category experience, we cut that to just 10 steps — reducing complexity by 75% and enabling faster, more accurate cost analysis.

Information Architecture

I designed a new Cost Categories subsection integrated into Billing & Cost Management. This avoided disruption to existing workflows while providing a centralised, scalable entry point for managing costs.

Information Architecture Redesign: Introduced a dedicated Cost Categories section within Billing & Cost Management — creating a scalable entry point without disrupting existing workflows.

Concept Proposals

We supported multiple interaction models to match different personas:

  • CSV Uploads – bulk creation for finance managers

  • Logic-based rule builder – WYSIWYG rules for operations teams

  • Code syntax editor – direct control for engineers

  • CRUD management – create, update, delete categories, with retroactive changes

Flexible Interaction Models: Designed for multiple personas — from finance to engineering — with support for CSV uploads, visual rule builders, direct code editing, and full CRUD management for retroactive control.

Prototypes & Testing

High-fidelity prototypes brought these concepts to life and were tested with domain users.

Main findings:

  • Users preferred a centralised IA under Billing & Cost Management

  • Multiple creation methods were essential for adoption across personas

  • Confusing terminology (e.g., “rule value”) required refinement

  • Users needed clear retroactive change indicators

  • Inactive states had to be visually distinct from deleted states

Prototyping & Usability Testing: High-fidelity prototypes validated key design decisions with domain experts — surfacing critical feedback on terminology, retroactive clarity, inactive states, and the need for flexible creation paths.

Results

  • Reduced process complexity by 75% (40 → 10 steps)

  • Achieved 92% task success, 4.5/5 satisfaction, 4.3/5 usability

  • Increased activation rates by removing access barriers and aligning workflows with user mental models

  • Directly contributed to monetisation by increasing feature adoption, retention, and customer confidence in OCI cost management

Validated Results: Usability testing confirmed major gains: 75% reduction in process steps, 92% task success, and high satisfaction (4.5/5). These improvements boosted activation, feature adoption, and overall confidence in OCI’s cost management tools.

Learnings

Multiple paths drive adoption

Supporting CSV, logic, and code ensured accessibility across finance, ops, and engineering personas.

Access is as important as UX

Without resolving broken permissions, adoption would never have improved — fixing this was a turning point.

Complex problems need simple anchors

Centralising features under a new Cost Categories section gave users a clear mental model, reducing confusion and driving engagement.

Redesigned Cost Management Dashboard: Simplified cost tracking and analysis experience — cutting process steps by 75%, removing access barriers, and boosting adoption across teams.

Discovery & Definition Timeline: Kickoff workshop aligned cross-functional teams around goals, scope, and user needs. This UX plan laid the groundwork — covering personas, IA, flows, and test strategy — and helped secure delivery buy-in early.

Redesigned User Journey: The original tagging flow spanned 40+ steps across three services. By consolidating tasks into a dedicated cost category experience, we cut that to just 10 steps — reducing complexity by 75% and enabling faster, more accurate cost analysis.

Information Architecture Redesign: Introduced a dedicated Cost Categories section within Billing & Cost Management — creating a scalable entry point without disrupting existing workflows.

Flexible Interaction Models: Designed for multiple personas — from finance to engineering — with support for CSV uploads, visual rule builders, direct code editing, and full CRUD management for retroactive control.

Prototyping & Usability Testing: High-fidelity prototypes validated key design decisions with domain experts — surfacing critical feedback on terminology, retroactive clarity, inactive states, and the need for flexible creation paths.

Validated Results: Usability testing confirmed major gains: 75% reduction in process steps, 92% task success, and high satisfaction (4.5/5). These improvements boosted activation, feature adoption, and overall confidence in OCI’s cost management tools.