Designing automated product updates in Autodesk Access
Most managed users delayed updates until something broke. I designed an in-app and OS notification experience that surfaced IT-scheduled updates directly to end users, turning unexpected interruptions into planned moments.
Javier didn't know the update was coming. He only found out when his work stopped.
Monday, 8:40 AM. Javier opens the Revit model he left mid-review on Friday. His first client meeting starts in five minutes.
As the model loads, he spots an email from IT that arrived the previous week. A critical security update had been scheduled, and everyone was expected to update through their account portal before Monday. He missed it. Now his version is out of compliance, and he can't continue until the update is installed.
Javier isn't the exception. Most managed users aren't thinking about software updates, they're focused on getting their work done. Updates often become visible only when something breaks or IT steps in.
That was the design challenge: How might we make scheduled updates happen automatically, with little or no effort from users — so their products stay secure and up to date without disrupting their work?
Make product updates visible to the user.
Autodesk Access is a desktop app that manages software updates for Autodesk products. IT administrators schedule updates, and end users receive them automatically.
End users get Access from
- Direct download from autodesk.com/products/autodesk-access/overview
- Automatic install with any new 2022-or-later product installation
- Progressive self-update rollout: percentage-based progressive rollout via automatic updater
- SCCM/Intune deployments: IT admins can deploy silently using AdAccess-Installer
Users had little visibility into upcoming updates. Updates were either communicated manually by IT administrators or deployed silently in the background, leaving users confused about what changed and why.
The goal was to make scheduled updates more transparent by notifying users ahead of time, giving them the option to learn what's changing or simply wait for the update to install automatically.
Flow: Receive notification → Dismiss the notification or Learn more with Access application → Update installs → Confirmation
I owned the end-user experience for scheduled updates, while a partner designer focused on the admin experience. I designed three key flows:
- Multiple update policies
- Update notifications and reminders
- Prioritisation of different schedule types (e.g. critical and missed updates)
Two kinds of user. This project is about the one who isn't in control.
Autodesk Access serves two types: individual users who manage their own updates, and managed users whose updates are set by an IT admin. This project focuses on the second — that's Javier, whose update schedule is controlled by his organization, not by him.
Users only update when it breaks
Before designing anything, I wanted to know three things: where users hit friction without scheduled updates, how they'd expect scheduling to behave, and whether anyone actually opens Autodesk Access. Seven guerrilla Zoom interviews across industries surfaced six findings.
I never go looking for updates. If something's broken, IT tells me — otherwise I just assume I'm fine.Participant · managed-environment user · discovery interviews
Users only update when something breaks.
Most end users do not proactively update. They rely on IT to tell them when to act.
Users did not know if they needed an update.
Larger firms relied on IT emails or group chats for updates. Solo users went directly to the Autodesk Account portal website.
Access had a discoverability problem.
Several participants had never heard of Autodesk Access, and saw no reason to use it since updates already surface in-product.
Users wanted release notes.
Participants consistently asked to know what was changing and whether it would affect their files, OS or hardware.
Regular weekly updates felt too frequent.
Scheduling preferences ranged from monthly to quarterly. Nearly everyone wanted a snooze or override option.
Silent background updates were widely welcomed.
6 of 7 participants were open to silent scheduled background updates.
Aligning three notification layers before a single screen was designed.
Another designer worked on mapping how three channels — native OS notifications, the system-tray indicator, and the Access app — coordinate across the whole update experience, spanning seven phases from onboarding to update history. The map became the artifact that got product, engineering and design agreeing on how all three layers behaved before any screen was drawn.
Date tabs could bury a missed update where no one would see it.
The original design in the vision grouped scheduled updates into date tabs. That held up with a single update policy — but the moment admins set multiple policies with different dates and times, a missed update could get stranded inside a tab a user might never open.
I ran a 20-participant multivariate task-completion study to evaluate two design directions. The findings revealed what worked, what didn't, and informed a stronger third direction.
Task-completion testing is one of my favorite research methods because it captures both quantitative performance and qualitative behavioral insights in a single study.
Date tabs grouped by schedule (Nov 12 / Jan 12), updates nested by install time inside each tab.
Tabs removed. Every update with its date and time in one continuous view, filterable to just the missed ones.
Design carried over from Round 1.
Unscheduled and Scheduled toggle next to each other, rather than separated. Allow users to Update all missed and available updates.
Every missed update stayed visible without hunting through tabs. Usability testing favored the single continuous list. Backend data showed admins rarely schedule more than one or two policies, so the list scales without a navigation problem. And engineering flagged that the missed-update banner couldn't carry its own call-to-action button, a build constraint that made the banner redundant and reinforced C from the technical side too.
Notifications that confirm without interrupting.
The challenge was making sure users saw update reminders without creating the kind of notification overload that leads to alert fatigue. A 64-participant survey surfaced a “golden hour” — the time window when reminders were most likely to be noticed.
To reduce notification fatigue, these rules were introduced:
- 01Reminders land in the golden hour, when they're most likely to be seen.
- 02Same-day updates collapse into a single reminder, sent before the earliest one begins.
- 03Success notifications auto-dismiss after five seconds — long enough to register, without asking the user to act.
Scheduled Updates shipped in January 2026.
End users could now receive admin-scheduled updates directly in Autodesk Access, allowing them to be informed, prepared, and in control.
Receiving an OS notification for a product update, with options to open Access Desktop or update silently.
Live progress.
Thinking behind the work
When multiple products have different statuses. The list needs clear sorting logic so the most urgent item always surfaces first.
An example of how toast notifications were documented for development so no ambiguity on timing, behaviour, and dismissal rules.
Mapping every OS notification state - reminder, scheduled day, postponement and how they combine when multiple fire in the same day. This ensures no edge case goes undesigned.
Reduced in outdated-version across products
Surfacing admin-scheduled updates directly to end users beat the 50% year-over-year reduction target for non-latest-version usage, across AutoCAD, Revit, and Inventor.
Below the year-over-year target across every product.
From 28,900 to 101,600 active users.
Scheduled-update adoption.
CES score for the update experience.
Start with a clearer north-star
Breaking the work into thin slices meant some edge cases and scenarios weren't accounted for until a later phase and we had to revisit and redo parts of the design as a result.
Start with a clearer vision of the end product. Parts of Autodesk Access had been touched by other designers before I joined, so I built my understanding from what was already created, which meant some assumptions were inherited rather than intentional. Starting from a shared north-star would have reduced the back-and-forth and made the thin-slice sequencing cleaner.