Open Source
UI & UX Design | User Research
SAP SE
Giving developers transparency over the open source software they can and can't use.
The goal of this project was to replace a slow, manual approval process with a self-service tool that let developers make informed decisions about open source dependencies.
Developers regularly rely on open source and third-party libraries to build software. At an enterprise scale, using them is not straightforward, every library carries potential license and security risks that need to be assessed before it can be used in SAP products.
The process for getting approval was entirely manual. Developers had to send a request by email, which triggered a slow and opaque review process. There was no way to check whether a library had already been approved for use elsewhere in the company. Developers were blocked, legal and compliance teams were overloaded with repetitive requests, and the same libraries were being reviewed multiple times across different teams.
I worked on UI and UX design alongside research, starting with interviews to understand both sides of the process: developers who needed quick answers, and the legal and compliance teams responsible for assessing risk. The biggest design challenge was presenting risk information in a way that was clear enough for developers to act on without oversimplifying the underlying complexity. I worked through several rounds of prototyping and testing to land on a layered approach: a clear top-level recommendation, with the ability to drill into license details, security findings, and prior usage across the company. The tool was built to fit alongside existing developer workflows so adoption did not require changing how teams already worked.
Developers could make informed decisions about open source dependencies quickly and independently, reducing bottlenecks for engineering teams and freeing up legal and compliance from repetitive review work. Decisions that previously took days of back and forth could be made in minutes.