Work: Concept, Wireframe, Design, User testing

Introduction

RIPE Database is one of the primary service of RIPE NCC. RIPE Database is a WHOIS service that comprise of IP address and AS numbers and information of their assignees.

RIPE Database has around 2.5 million visitors in 2020 and around 80 million requests coming from website, whois query and API calls.

This service is almost 20 years old and since 2015, RIPE Database has not changed its design and over the years of user testing uncovered some of the problems. Also aligning with the future design milestones we had to think very carefully on the design and implementation details.

Problem statement

• With the current data structure on result page, it is difficult to look for important contacts of the resource holder.
• Users were not getting the expected results when using flags in their search query.
• Selection of unnecessary filter dropdown result in no result and confuses users.
• Users frequently switches back and forth between full text search (string search) and query page (object search).

Solution

It was a perfect opportunity to start the project and couple the problem statements with the new design language we created in house. Along with some more improvements and design direction for this application.

As RIPE Database is a community driven project and for that reason from the beginning we were in contact with working group chairs to take them in confidence and present the wireframes and designs in community forum.

It is an ongoing project and we are making iterative design changes.

RIPE Database website

https://apps.db.ripe.net/db-web-ui/query

RIPE 83 conference presentation