Rudy Chou

Problem

Outsourced design, siloed product lines, portal shaped by customer requests — not a unified product vision.

Intervention

Brought design in-house; ran customer research with account teams and service operators; embedded designers across MDR, supply chain defense, and DRP with weekly cross-functional rituals.

Outcome

MDR ticket and incident workflow redesign cut mean time to respond by 42%. Unified portal shell adopted by Fortune 500 customers.

BlueVoyant · 2021–2023 · Case study

Problem

No design function when I arrived as the first Director of UX/UI; no operating model, no standing to protect research findings or design decisions.

Intervention

Built the design org from scratch — dual-track discovery and delivery, UX lifecycle across all development phases, designer-to-developer workflow maps, and hiring to a full research + product design + design ops function.

Outcome

Design embedded in the product lifecycle as a structural partner — the retrospective summary the org adopted. Patterns carried into ActZero and BlueVoyant.

Cylance · 2016–2019 · Case study

Problem

Three acquired product lines with separate engineering teams, PMs, and UI conventions — no center of gravity for customer-facing quality.

Intervention

UI Guidelines, dedicated front-end infrastructure team, and a shared component layer both design and engineering build against.

Outcome

First cross-product design system at BlueVoyant. Reduced redundant feature work and aligned portal delivery across squads.

BlueVoyant · 2021–2023 · Case study

Problem

Isolated Sketch files, engineering rebuilding similar components — interpretation gap between design and production.

Intervention

Built Confidence Design System hierarchy (principles → applications) shared across enterprise console and consumer product on React/Redux.

Outcome

33% reduction in design-to-engineering handoff time. System in active use through BlackBerry acquisition close.

Cylance · 2016–2019 · Case study

Problem

ML endpoint protection with no UX template — invisible safety, model decisions operators couldn't interrogate.

Intervention

Explainability-first console: confidence scores, disposition controls, Optics EDR evolution, MITRE ATT&CK kill chain in product UI. 1,201-customer SUS program with role segmentation.

Outcome

Validated dashboard redesign brief; limited-release console shipped late 2018. Trust-interface patterns used in every security role after.

Cylance · 2016–2019 · Case study

Problem

Authentication treated as IT back-end configuration — no design function, no developer story, no customer-owned login surface.

Intervention

Joined as the first designer and front-end developer; built white-label SSO on AngularJS + SDK contract, adaptive auth policy UX, and themed production deployments (AEO, NCL, Revlon) — design and front-end as one delivery track.

Outcome

Technical evaluations run on functional branded demos, not mockups. Developer integration without professional services on every deal.

SecureAuth · 2012–2016 · Case study

Problem

MDR strength invisible to customers — no maturity model tying operations to executive reporting.

Intervention

Security Posture Assessments architecture with CTO and head of customer success — normalized CMMC and CIS controls, analyst-to-customer translation layer.

Outcome

Feature that made the MDR service auditable over time; shipped alongside nine-week portal delivery.

ActZero · 2020–2021 · Case study

Problem

Stealth-mode MDR company with no public identity, brand, website, or market narrative before funding deadline.

Intervention

Sequenced product narrative before visual identity; brand token system for parallel vendor execution; marketing site as exit from stealth.

Outcome

28% ARR expansion and 4.8/5 onboarding CSAT after marketing site launch.

ActZero · 2020–2021 · Case study

Problem

No customer portal spec — architecture had to be extracted from analyst knowledge before engineering could build.

Intervention

Design system before product build; portal shell, queue, and tenant views on shared tokens with a parallel engineering track.

Outcome

Customer portal shipped in nine weeks with no prototype-to-production translation gap.

ActZero · 2020–2021 · Case study

Problem

Enterprise-only story limiting addressable market and acquisition narrative.

Intervention

CylancePROTECT Home Edition — consumer BU, self-service acquisition path, same ML engine under a different design contract; enterprise + consumer on shared design system.

Outcome

Product portfolio breadth cited in BlackBerry's $1.4B acquisition (closed February 2019). Same director role through transition.

Cylance · 2016–2019 · Case study