Icinga Insiders: How User Research Shapes the Future of Icinga Web
Icinga Insiders is one of our core initiatives for involving users directly in the ongoing development of Icinga Web, its modules, and new functionality. Through structured research sessions, we gain practical insights into how monitoring teams work with Icinga in real environments and how the product can better support their daily workflows.
Rather than relying on assumptions, Icinga Insiders allows us to validate ideas early, identify usability challenges, and refine features based on direct feedback from administrators and operators who use Icinga.
Insights in our latest project: Icinga Web 2 Dashboard
Since we’re planning to evolve Icinga Web 2’s Dashboard feature, we wanted to understand how teams use them. The focus is on how admins manage and distribute dashboards to operators, which dashlets they use and how they actually appear on their screens.
We spoke to people from monitoring teams in different organizations. The interviews are mostly held remotely. While we’re taking notes during the sessions, recording enables us to get back and look up details in hindsight again. Of course, only if the participants consent. We appreciate the time and insights the interview partners provide, so everything they give us is voluntary.
On top of that, we encourage our interviewees to share their screens during the session. Seeing Icinga Web in action, in the context of their actual setup enables us to ask questions more precisely and uncover important details that just we weren’t able to in a regular conversation. We also asked our interview partners to tell us their specific needs and ideas for more advanced dashboarding in Icinga.
We want to understand, how you work with Icinga Web
With Icinga Insiders we want to better understand how people actually work with Icinga Web. We run different formats of sessions, including research interviews, evaluation interviews, and usability tests – with probably more to come.
We’ve already applied this approach in the development of Icinga Dependency Views and Icinga Notifications with success, and we keep using it to explore and develop new features as well as improving current functionality.
Become an Icinga Insider
If you use Icinga in an organizational context, you are welcome to join the Icinga Insiders program. You’ll receive e-mail notifications about upcoming research sessions and can simply choose a time slot that fits your schedule.
By participating, you contribute directly to the future of Icinga Web. In many cases, participants also get early insights into new features before they are publicly released.
