Flow — Huawei Cloud
Flow is a low-code product for building business workflows through visual configuration — connecting services, structuring approval logic, and turning process rules into forms and canvases non-engineers can configure, including AstroMate, an AI-assisted path.
- Role
- UI Designer
- Team
- Huawei Cloud · UCD
- Timeline
- 2022–2023
- Outcome
- Product UI, visual system and design foundations
Context
Enterprise teams often need to move approvals, tickets, and multi-step processes online — reimbursements, leave requests, ticket routing — without writing backend code for every branch, connector, or condition.
Flow turns that process logic into a visual workflow: a canvas for branches and actions, connectors for reaching third-party services, forms for capturing structured data, and approval rules — or-sign, counter-sign, or sequential — for routing decisions through the right people.
Flow also sits inside Huawei Cloud’s wider Astro low-code family, and offers an AI-assisted path — AstroMate — alongside manual creation, so a workflow can start from a written description as easily as from a blank canvas.
Product family context
Flow was part of Huawei Cloud’s Astro low-code product family, focused on visual workflow creation and automation.
Product flow
A simplified view of how users move from entering Flow to creating, configuring, and running a workflow. Click any node — or focus the diagram and use the arrow keys — to see its corresponding page.
Workflow logic
The core challenge was translating technical workflow logic — connectors, triggers, rules, and forms — into an interface that enterprise teams could configure visually without reading code.
Complex workflow logic
Triggers, branches, data inputs, and actions had to work together within a single workflow.
Interface consistency
Node styles and card layouts had to remain uniform across the canvas and configuration panels.
Visual clarity
Multi-branch workflows needed to remain readable and easy to edit as process complexity grew.
My contribution
As UI designer, I designed key product surfaces and reusable UI patterns across Flow, covering the workflow canvas, product pages, component states, iconography, and product identity. I worked alongside a UX designer, who defined Flow’s interaction model, including the connector states and canvas validation shown below; I designed the UI built on it.
- Designed core product surfaces, including the workflow canvas, workspace, and management pages.
- Created the UI component library: node states, card layouts, and icon sets.
- Defined product identity and entry surfaces within the Astro low-code platform.
- Designed the Astro product-family logo system, including Flow’s distinct mark.
Design-system foundations
Organised node styles, branch rules, interaction states, and form inputs into a reusable UI library across the canvas and configuration panels.
Broader product surfaces
Extended the interface patterns beyond the canvas to workbench views, approval flows, expression editors, and management pages.
Reflection
Flow marked a shift in how I approached product design — from designing individual interfaces to thinking about the system behind them. Working with unfamiliar enterprise concepts taught me to translate technical logic into visual structures that could support future development.
Although my role focused on UI design, building reusable pages, components, and patterns became an early step in my shift from designing screens to designing systems.
AstroMate was my first professional exploration of AI-assisted interaction design, introducing a question that continued through my later work: how generated output should remain understandable, reviewable and under human control.