Stress Test

When an Aware user creates a rule in monitoring, an interface is displayed that allows that user to customize a series of regular expressions. A regular expression in plain english might read as such:

If the message contains a social security number and a bank account number, then redact the information immediately and notify HR.

The above example is one of the most commonly used out-of-the-box regular expressions that Aware provides, but users can also build expressions of their own. My task was to stress test the interface for building regular expressions to determine if the display would become too overwhelming.

After speaking with the engineering team, I learned that we allow for a user to create a 10 x 10 function in order to account for highly specific rule setting. User research showed us that most Aware users build regular expressions that search for one or two keywords and respond with one or two actions, much like the example written above. Still, if the constraint isn’t there, we want to make sure that a user won’t accidentally over-encumber the interface with a swollen rule.

Below is what a blown out regular expression would look like with the previous interface. I was originally intending on creating an expression that would max out the constraints of the software, but after my manager checked in to see how the project was going, he felt I had already proved that the option to write out a 10 x 10 regular expression would be overbearing.

Stress test failed.

After presenting the findings to our engineers and front-end developers, we limited the regular expression customization to something much more modest and reasonable.