Saturn Portal
A platform for Filecoin Saturn CDN users to manage their subscription plans and track their consumption of the network.
Problem
Filecoin Saturn is a CDN that accelerates data stored on the Filecoin network and IPFS. The Saturn network launched in Q4 2022 and by August 2023, when this project began, there were over 2,000 points of presence serving content.
However, the onboarding process for new customers wanting to use Saturn lacked a seamless and user-friendly experience. Customers faced challenges in setting up, understanding costs, and analyzing their network usage. A registration process was also needed to generate a UCAN keypair for network metering.
Solution
Recognizing the need for an improved customer experience, Protocol Labs hired Subvisual to help develop Saturn Portal. Our team consisted of one product designer and two software developers, working closely with the PL team.
We started by going through the requirements list with the PL team to understand scope and prioritize what the MVP needed to cover. This surfaced a key question early on: how much technical detail should the portal expose? Saturn's audience ranged from developers managing their own integrations to customers who mainly wanted to understand their bill. We erred on the side of clarity, leading with the most actionable information on the dashboard and giving access to more technical details to those who needed them.
One of the trickier flows was the integration setup. Configuring a service worker involves steps that can feel daunting if presented poorly, so we built the flow around a persistent stepper to keep users oriented throughout, contextual instructions at each stage, and a direct support contact for anyone who got stuck. From there, we moved to wireframing, tested with the Protocol Labs team, and iterated until we had a solid MVP.
The MVP covers the four things a CDN customer actually needs: usage and request monitoring, plan and billing management, integration setup with service worker status, and account settings. For the dashboard, the main design decision was information hierarchy: surfacing current usage and request volume at a glance, with deeper analytics available for those who needed them.
Outcome
The portal was unveiled during Lab Week 23 at Devconnect in Istanbul, Turkey, in November 2023. The initial release was invite-only, and early users responded well, with feedback highlighting how easy it was to set up and manage their CDN usage in one place.
Since then, Saturn has been deprecated, as its team has joined forces with web3.storage to develop Storacha Network.