Resource List Filter — Satellite element enablement.

How it started

IBM Cloud Satellite lets users deploy IBM Cloud services on their own infrastructure — on-premises, at the edge, or in other clouds. But the IBM Cloud Resource List — the central hub where users see all deployed resources — had no awareness of Satellite locations. Deploy to a Satellite location and your resources appeared without any location context, indistinguishable from public cloud resources.

The problem: hybrid cloud users managing both public cloud regions and private Satellite locations had no filter to separate them. The existing Filter dropdown only showed public cloud regions. Satellite was invisible.

I was tasked with UX research and concept wireframes for a Satellite-aware Resource List filter, collaborating with JP Pollard, Brendan Fitzpatrick, Andras Kuti, Derek Bressler, and Virginia Nicholson.

Understanding the use case

Research began with IBM Cloud Satellite docs — mapping how Satellite locations relate to IBM Cloud managed-from regions (each Satellite location is tied to one IBM Cloud region). Primary persona: IT administrators and DevOps engineers running hybrid deployments — public cloud VPCs and on-premises Satellite locations under a single account.

• Filter gap — The existing dropdown was designed only for public cloud. Satellite locations were completely absent.
• Cognitive friction — Users had to mentally separate Satellite from public cloud resources with no visual support.
• Discoverability — New Satellite users had no indicator that their Satellite resources would appear in the Resource List at all.

What was designed

The concept introduces a Satellite locations toggle within the existing Filter dropdown — a single entry point that expands to show a dynamic regional hierarchy of all Satellite locations under the account, grouped by geography.

• Toggle pattern — Switch between All Locations and Satellite Locations — no new mental model, extends the existing filter
• Regional hierarchy — Asia Pacific (Chennai, Osaka, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo), Europe (Amsterdam, Frankfurt, London, Madrid), North America (Dallas, Washington DC)
• Zone drill-down — Each location expands to individual Satellite zones (us-south-1, us-south-2, eu-de-1, eu-es-1)
• Onboarding tooltip — "Brief about Satellite locations" dismissible panel for first-time users
• No redundancy — Catalog location filter is disabled when Resource List filter is active