IT Security, Data Visualization, Design Systems

Smart Tabs: A Heads-Up Display That Rebuilt Analyst Trust at OpSec

A customizable heads-up display for OpSec's brand-protection platform: several marketplace views open at once, live scan status on every tab, a high-contrast scan scheduling grid, and accessible light and dark themes.

01 Problem
Exit interviews showed customers losing confidence in the platform. Latency hid what the system was doing, and analysts could only see one view at a time.
02 Approach
A tab system designed as a component, with anatomy, states, grouping and sizes, plus a redesigned scan scheduling grid and row themes checked against AA and AAA contrast.
03 Outcome
Analysts could watch several marketplaces at once while scans ran, turning hidden system work into visible proof that it was working. Trust became a tracked success metric.

Brands protected on the platform

Interactive prototype

Open full screen in Figma ↗

Click the tabs and controls to move through the prototype, or open it full screen in Figma.

The tab system

Tab anatomy, tab states, tab grouping and switching metric: each tab shows a listing count, a custom view name and last-updated time, with viewing, non-viewing, new-info and Smart Tagging states — Tab anatomy, states and grouping

Short and tall versions of the tab bar, the tall one adding listing counts and update times — Short and tall tab bars

Tab management menu over the listings grid, shown in light and dark themes — Tab management, light and dark

Header and tab bar in light and dark themes with their primary color palettes — Header themes and palette

Anatomy of the smart header and its status bar, annotated — Smart header anatomy

Harvester scan scheduling

The heads-up display: several marketplace scans at once, each with a completion dial, above the scan schedule grid — The HUD over scan scheduling

Scan scheduling dashboard in the light theme, with completion dials and a grid of scans and their status — Scan scheduling, light theme

Scan scheduling dashboard in the dark theme — Scan scheduling, dark theme

Scan scheduling dashboard layouts in the light theme — Dashboard layouts, light

Scan scheduling dashboard layouts in the dark theme — Dashboard layouts, dark

Accessible grid themes

Grid row themes and UI requirements in the light theme, with row background, highlight and stroke colors, plus contrast ratings for each color pair — Row themes and contrast ratings, light

Grid row themes and UI requirements in the dark theme, with status tags and controls — Row themes, dark

Concept: verifiable origin

Dark-theme grid of flagged software listings with columns for build hash and SBOM age — Build hash and SBOM age, inline

Hovering an SBOM age badge shows when the SBOM was generated, its format and its source — SBOM details on hover

Hovering a build hash shows the signature verified via Sigstore and signed by the OpSec build pipeline — Signature check on hover

OpSec's platform helps brands find and remove counterfeit and infringing listings on marketplaces like Amazon and Taobao. Exit interviews told a hard story: customers were losing confidence in it. Scans ran slowly behind the scenes, and analysts could only look at one view at a time, so the system felt slow and opaque even when it was working. Trust became a success metric for the redesign.

The problem

Latency was not something design could remove, but it could be made visible. Analysts worked across many marketplaces and brands at once, yet the interface made them leave one view to check another. Customer service managers had the same blind spot when clients asked what was happening with their scans.

A heads-up display built from tabs

Smart Tabs puts several custom views on screen at once. Each tab carries its own listing count, view name and last-updated time, so an analyst can keep working in one marketplace while scans finish in others. The tab was designed as a component, with a clear anatomy, four states (viewing, not viewing, new information, and Smart Tagging), grouping by color or label so analysts can segment their workflow, and short and tall versions of the bar. Analysts and managers can add collapsible dashboards and bars to fit how they work.

Scan scheduling that stands apart

Every grid on the platform looked the same, which made it easy to lose your place. The new harvester scan scheduling view gives scans their own high-contrast layout, with completion dials across the top and clear status colors in the grid, so it reads differently from the listings grids around it.

Accessible by default

Dense data tables are hard to read. Row backgrounds, highlights and strokes were defined as themes for light and dark modes, and every color pair was checked with a Figma accessibility plugin against AA and AAA contrast standards.

Concept: verifiable origin

A later concept extends the same HUD to software brand protection, for clients like Adobe. Tabs would carry verified build hashes and SBOM age inline, so an enforcement analyst can see that a scanner or classifier ran on a known, untampered build. That turns a similarity score into evidence a legal team can defend, and it supports cleaner takedowns:

Defensible takedowns: each flagged listing links to an attested build, a clean chain of custody.
Less noise: views aware of vulnerability status hide non-issues, so analysts stay on real infringement.
Smoother approvals: clear provenance reduces security objections in procurement and cross-border enforcement.

See how Smart Tabs fits the wider platform in the OpSec case study.

Skills: Product Strategy, UX Design, UX Research, Quantitative Analysis, Design Systems, Product Ownership.

Next case study Adaptive Part 1: Research and Strategy for Order Management HealthTech, Enterprise UX, Design Systems