Optimizing Software Assignments with Autodesk Account’s Usage Report
In 2022, I joined Autodesk as a Principal Product Designer leading the reporting strategy for Autodesk Account. My first major challenge was to designing the Usage Report, a page designed to help software administrators optimize license and token assignments. I guided a cross-functional team, including a UX designer, content designer, and UX researcher, collaborating with product management, engineering, and business model strategists. My responsibilities included defining the UX strategy, facilitating workshops, creating wireframes, and overseeing iterative testing. I presented the outcomes to stakeholders, received praise from our CEO and helped positively shape Autodesk’s admin experience.
Usage Report landing page and details modal
Challenge
Software administrators faced challenges managing user access and optimizing budgets due to fragmented usage data and time-intensive processes. With Autodesk’s shift to a named user model in 2020 and the introduction of the costly Premium subscription ($300 per license), admins struggled to measure return on investment (ROI) and optimize assignments, leading to a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of -2 and widespread complaints about cost and value.
How might we enable software administrators to make informed, efficient decisions about license and token assignments using actionable usage data within Autodesk Account?
Background
Autodesk’s admins manage software access, budgets, and renewals for organizations, often handling hundreds or thousands of users. Key pain points included time-consuming administration (e.g., clicking into individual user details for usage stats) and difficulty measuring ROI, exacerbated by historical changes:
- 2015-2019: Rising prices without perceived value increases frustrated users.
- 2020: Shift to named-user licensing raised costs and management time.
- 2020: Premium tier introduced ($300/license) for basic usage insights.
- 2021: Flex added for low-usage access, but data visibility required Premium.
- Ongoing: Open complaints via forums and channels highlighted high costs, lack of innovation, and inefficient models.
My team’s goal was to address these pain points by creating an experience that consolidated data, reduced decision-making time, and improved trust in Autodesk’s offerings.
Gathering feedback from admins at Autodesk University
Approach
Drawing from Nielsen Norman Group’s design process, I led an agile, iterative approach—empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test, implement—to deliver an MVP by fiscal year-end. This shifted the team from waterfall to collaborative sprints, involving stakeholders early and often via Mural boards and debriefs.
- Empathize: Led research panels interviewing admins on Premium experiences. Key questions: “How do you estimate renewal needs?” Responses highlighted needs for power-user vs. rare-user data, Flex vs. subscription comparisons, and individual preferences.
- Define: Created a Mural UX brief with the PM to outline problems (e.g., no side-by-side Flex/SUS comparisons), objectives (e.g., reduce decision time, build trust), and a hypothesis: “Admins can optimize assignments with easier access to reformatted data and controls like filters.”
- Ideate: Facilitated a design studio workshop with PM, engineering lead, and business strategist. We generated wireframes, voted on ideas, and refined via group feedback, yielding concepts like summary overviews and product-level breakdowns.
- Prototype: Built interactive wireframes in Figma, incorporating content and visual design input. Added interactions (e.g., tooltips, modals) for testing realism.
- Test: Conducted 17 remote sessions (co-facilitated with research manager) and an Autodesk University (AU) workshop. Scenarios focused on use cases like balancing licenses and Flex tokens. Debriefs post-session captured wins, issues, and ideas.
- Implement: Demoed the MVP, iterating based on feedback (e.g., simplifying tables, adding filtered exports), and parterned with Engineering to ensure build quality would meet user expectations.
I orchestrated the alignment between three key stakeholders—the product manager, engineering manager, and business model strategist—while leading my design team (UX designer, content designer, UX researcher) assigned to this project to help execute the vision.
Feedback grid used for user interview debriefs
Timeline of overlapping touch points across team
Prioritization grid for narrowing scope to MVP
Insights
The study uncovered critical admin needs and usability gaps:
- User Profile: The primary persona, the technology admin, manages software access and budgets, prioritizing cost-efficiency and high ROI. They value data-driven decisions but are frustrated by time-intensive processes.
- Pain Points: Admins struggled to access granular usage data (e.g., days used per product, monthly averages) and compare Flex and subscription usage side-by-side. Data was scattered, requiring clicks into individual user details.
- Preferences: Admins preferred analyzing data within the Account UI over external tools like Excel, seeking filters, sorting, and export options for flexibility.
- Testing Feedback: Admins valued the summary section, inactive user counts, and days-used metrics but found product icons distracting and expandable rows confusing. They requested group-based filtering and data tied to specific assignments, not user-level summaries.
- Process Gaps: The initial waterfall process risked delaying the launch beyond a year. My agile approach, with frequent stakeholder collaboration, streamlined delivery.
The hypothesis—“Admins can optimize assignments with easier access to the right usage data and more control”—guided feature prioritization, focusing on data granularity and usability.
Design Studio exercise with the team
Low-resolution wireframes used for user feedback
High-resolution wireframes used for usability testing
Key Features
- Summary Dashboard: Provided a snapshot of assignment health, including active/inactive user counts.
- Granular Metrics: Enabled analysis with total days used, monthly averages, and per-product usage data.
- Streamlined Filters: Offered team, date-range, and export options, with group-based filtering added post-MVP.
- Modal Interface: Replaced expandable rows with a modal for collection data, improving usability.
- Consolidated Data: Merged Flex and subscription usage into a single table, reducing complexity.
- Assignment-Level Insights: Tied data to specific licenses/tokens, not user aggregates, for precision.
Outcome
The Usage Report, launched in February 2023, delivered transformative results for administrators and Autodesk:
- Improved User Satisfaction: The Net Promoter Score (NPS) increased from -2 at project kickoff to 16 post-launch reflecting enhanced admin trust and satisfaction.
- High Engagement: The Usage Report became the most visited reporting page, averaging over 20,000 monthly visits, demonstrating its critical role in admin workflows.
- Positive User Feedback: A post-MVP usefulness score component showed 85% thumbs-up ratings (up from 80% at launch), with comments highlighting the page’s value in optimizing assignments. Previous reporting pages recieve a 40% average usefulness score for reference.
- Business Impact: Strengthened admin relationships, with feedback indicating they felt heard, and supported Autodesk’s Premium subscription value proposition.
- Design System Contributions: Created reusable UI components (date range selector and column selector), now leveraged by other teams, enhancing design consistency.
- Operational Improvements: My agile process, replacing a waterfall approach, reduced delivery time from over a year to six months, setting a precedent for future projects.
- Team Development: Served as a training ground for junior designers and an onboarding best practice, boosting team capability.
- Leadership Recognition: Earned praise from Autodesk’s CEO, who cited it as a model for impactful work, and VP Steve Blum, who highlighted it in all-hands meetings.
Latest iteration of Usage Report with data visualization and filter improvements
Impact
The Usage Report project not only addressed critical admin needs but also delivered significant business value by aligning with our organizational strategic goal of enhancing the admin experience. Its success, reflected in NPS growth, and engagement, and leadership recognition, underscores its role in transforming how admins manage software assignments. The agile process I introduced became a blueprint for future projects, while the design system components and training opportunities strengthened the team’s long-term capabilities. Ongoing post-MVP work, such as automation, data visualization, and integration with Team Insights and Autodesk Assistant’s AI capabilities, ensures the page remains a vital tool for admins, reinforcing Autodesk’s commitment to delivering value to the admin.