Overview
Aurora was part of the BlackBerry Cylance security product ecosystem, focused on giving enterprise security teams a more unified way to access product workflows, security insights, and operational tasks.
My work covered two connected areas:
- Aurora Unified Portal experience design
- Contributions to the Cylance design system built from the ground up
During this period, Arctic Wolf acquired the BlackBerry Cylance product business. As part of that transition, the Cylance product team moved into Arctic Wolf, where the work continued in the broader managed security and XDR product context.
Context
BlackBerry Cylance had multiple security products and workflows across endpoint protection, threat detection, and response. As products evolved, teams needed more consistency in navigation, interaction patterns, component behavior, and visual language.
Aurora Unified Portal helped bring product experiences closer together, while the Cylance design system created the foundation for repeatable design and engineering decisions across teams.
The Challenge
Security products carry a high cognitive load. Analysts, administrators, and security operations teams need to move quickly, but inconsistent interfaces slow them down.
Key challenges included:
- Multiple product areas with different interaction patterns
- Dense security workflows that needed clearer hierarchy
- Repeated UI decisions across teams without a shared system
- Need for reusable components that could support complex enterprise states
- Design-to-engineering handoff that had to scale across product teams
The goal was not only to make screens look consistent. The deeper goal was to make security workflows feel familiar, predictable, and easier to operate under pressure.
My Role
As a Senior UX Designer, I contributed to Aurora Unified Portal and helped shape reusable patterns for the Cylance design system.
My responsibilities included:
- Designing portal workflows, layouts, navigation patterns, and page structures
- Creating reusable component patterns for enterprise security use cases
- Defining interaction states for dense product screens
- Collaborating with product managers and engineers on feasibility and rollout
- Supporting design system adoption through practical usage patterns
- Aligning UI decisions with cybersecurity domain needs and user workflows
Design System Contribution
The Cylance design system was built to reduce fragmentation across product teams. I contributed by translating recurring product needs into reusable, documented patterns.
Focus areas included:
- Navigation and information architecture patterns
- Form, table, filter, and action states for enterprise workflows
- Empty, loading, error, and permission states
- Visual hierarchy for dense security data
- Consistent spacing, typography, and component behavior
- Practical patterns that engineers could implement and reuse
The system helped teams move from one-off screen decisions toward a shared product language.
Aurora Unified Portal
For Aurora Unified Portal, the design work focused on creating a more coherent entry point into Cylance product workflows.
Key design priorities:
- Make product areas easier to discover and navigate
- Reduce context switching between related workflows
- Improve scanability for operational users
- Create consistent page structures that could grow with the product
- Align portal experience with the emerging Cylance design system
This work required balancing product specificity with system-level consistency. Each workflow had its own needs, but the experience still had to feel like one product ecosystem.
Acquisition Transition
While I was working at BlackBerry Cylance, Arctic Wolf acquired the Cylance product business. After the acquisition, the Cylance product team transitioned into Arctic Wolf.
This transition expanded the product context from BlackBerry Cylance security products into Arctic Wolf's broader MDR/XDR ecosystem. It also reinforced the importance of scalable design systems, consistent workflows, and domain-specific UX patterns across security products.
Impact
The work helped create a stronger foundation for consistent product experiences across Cylance security workflows.
Key outcomes:
- More unified interaction patterns across portal and product surfaces
- Reusable design system components for enterprise security workflows
- Clearer handoff between design and engineering teams
- Stronger consistency in navigation, layouts, states, and visual hierarchy
- Better scalability for future product and platform work after the transition into Arctic Wolf
Learnings
1. A design system must be grounded in real product work. The most useful patterns came from actual workflow needs, not abstract component inventory.
2. Security UX needs consistency more than decoration. In cybersecurity products, predictable interaction patterns reduce cognitive load and help users act with confidence.
3. Organizational transitions test design maturity. The move from BlackBerry Cylance into Arctic Wolf showed why shared systems, clear product language, and reusable patterns matter beyond a single team or release.