Lenovo Security Assessment

Lenovo, in collaboration with the Cybersecurity Research Center at Ben-Gurion University, initiated a joint innovation project to address growing concerns in firmware-level security. The goal: develop a platform that helps detect vulnerabilities in critical low-level components.

Security UX
Dashboard UI
Data Clarity

Challange

The client approached us with the task of making the interface of their firmware security assessment service both highly usable and visually impressive. They already had a working prototype, but it required significant improvements in usability, a more intuitive user experience (UX), and a professional, polished user interface (UI).

Research

We conducted interviews with users who regularly perform firmware analysis. From these conversations, we gathered a number of wishes, ideas, and opinions about how they would like a convenient tool of this class to look and behave.

Ideation and Concepts

From an ergonomic standpoint, we decided to implement a columnar layout. We divided the screen into four vertical columns, each representing a distinct stage of working with firmware:

When developing the visual concept, we took into account the client’s request to align with the visual language of Lenovo’s gaming-oriented services, as well as the fact that the product is noticeably targeted at the Japanese audience.

Wireframing

To refine the UX, we created interactive wireframes. As wireframes are meant to do, they helped us discover and address a large number of small but important details. For example, the implementation of AI-based analysis and the recommendation of the most suitable plugin(s) for a given firmware or group of files was thoroughly worked out and iterated many times during the wireframe stage. We repeatedly collected feedback from the client’s domain experts until the flow reached a very solid state.

The columnar structure was also designed with future scalability in mind, it would allow (if the client ever decides to invest in it) the creation of a mobile / tablet version without breaking the core logic. The mobile version was not requested or developed, but the concept was built to be extendable in that direction.

Prototyping

One distinctive feature of this project was its relatively small scope. This gave us the freedom to apply visual techniques that are difficult, and sometimes impossible, to implement consistently across large-scale products with hundreds of screens and thousands of components that must remain functionally and visually coherent.

We chose to move toward a cyberpunk-inspired aesthetic. This is never an easy decision because decorative elements must never compromise functionality. Usability always remains the top priority.
So why add visual decoration at all? Because every product is made for people. It should deliver not only rational value, but also emotional one, users should genuinely enjoy interacting with it.

Testing

After internal and client-side testing rounds, we concluded that it would be valuable to complement the original dark-themed design with both light and dark modes, while fully preserving the overall concept.

This flexibility (just like the potential mobile version mentioned earlier) had already been architected into the design system and the Figma file structure from the very beginning, which made implementation straightforward and fast.
Testing also revealed that the presentation of results should be restructured slightly. The four-column layout was retained, but the column showing progress, test results, and reports for already processed jobs was moved to become the last (rightmost) one.

Outcomes

Already at the first public demonstration of the redesigned product at a trade show in Japan, the client attracted a significant number of new users, the user base grew 5×. After the redesign of the interface logic and the AI recommendation system, processing efficiency increased: users were able to analyze 68% more firmware files in the same amount of time.

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