Pixee’s Approach to Security Focused UX and Design

We're thrilled to announce that Pixee has won not one, but two Cyber UXcellence Awards at Black Hat USA 2025! Powered by Mindgrub, the awards celebrate teams creating intuitive, user-friendly, and effective security products. This recognition validates what we've believed since day zero: exceptional user experience isn't just nice to have in security tools. It's essential for driving real outcomes.

This post is based on an interview with our Staff Product Designer and founding team member, Terra Caussin. You can watch the full conversation here.

Why Design Matters in Security

In an industry often hindered by technical complexity and alert fatigue, we've taken a radically different approach. As Terra puts it:

"AI gives us incredible opportunities to save users time and reduce their pain points, but in security, control and oversight are non-negotiable, right?"

This philosophy has driven us to create a platform that doesn't just fix vulnerabilities. It respects the humans who need to review, understand, and approve those fixes. The result? A 76% merge rate for our automated security fix and triage recommendations.

Meeting Teams Where They Are (Without Breaking Their Flow)

One of our core design principles is protecting developer flow state. "We made a deliberate choice not to live inside the IDE because we think that's where the focus is most fragile," Terra notes. Instead, Pixee surfaces fixes in developers' natural review environment, the SCM, where they're already in review mode.

For security teams, we provide the high level view they need across repos and tools, with in-depth triage analysis that gives them control over when and where to run deeper analysis. It's about creating a true partnership between AI and human expertise, not just automation for automation's sake.

The Power of Minimalism in Complex Spaces

Handling critical security information without overwhelming users requires thoughtful design choices. Terra’s approach centers the user experience at every step:

"I've always been a big fan of minimalism and clean lines. I don't like clutter anywhere in my life, ask my family. And that philosophy helps me create space and clarity even when the data is complex."

By applying foundational design principles like Hick's Law (fewer choices mean faster decisions) and Gestalt principles (using proximity, similarity, and negative space to guide attention), we've created interfaces that surface exactly what's needed in the moment, with easy access to deeper details when required.

Building Trust Through Clarity

Our code fixes and triage are more than automation. They're well-crafted explanations that tell the story behind each change, making them valuable to both junior developers and seasoned security pros alike. As Terra explains, Pixee is intentionally designed to "educate folks as they go while still offering the depth that experts would need or expect."

This commitment to clear communication extends throughout our platform:

• Clean data visualizations that make analysis summaries instantly understandable

• Consistent visual patterns that improve discoverability and reduce cognitive load

• Flexible views for different personas, from engineering managers needing repository metrics to CISOs requiring reporting across the entire organization.

A Design-Driven Culture from Day Zero

While Terra may technically be our only designer, she's quick to point out that "UX is really a shared responsibility. Everyone's thinking about it. Everyone's driving it, and we're truly supporting it from all angles."

This design-first mentality, combined with early investment in a design system, has allowed us to move faster while maintaining quality. We've put less emphasis on rigid processes and more on systems thinking, which has helped us go further, faster.

Looking Ahead: The Future of Security UX

As AI becomes more central to cybersecurity, we see UX playing an even more critical role in keeping humans effectively in the loop. Terra notes:

"Trust doesn't mean replacing human judgment necessarily, it means AI can take on the heavy lifting so that people can focus on the higher value problem solving and decision making together."

We're already exploring new interaction patterns that enable deeper collaboration between security teams, developers, and AI agents. Users can provide feedback, add environmental context, and flag preferences that tune our analysis to match their unique organizational needs.

Thank You to Mindgrub and the Cybersecurity Community

These Cyber UXcellence Awards, presented by Mindgrub Technologies at Black Hat USA 2025, recognize not just our design work, but our fundamental belief that security tools should empower, not overwhelm. We're honored to be recognized alongside other innovative cybersecurity companies and grateful to our customers who trust us to help keep their software safe.

As we continue building the future of security fixes, we remain committed to respecting the key pillars of developer experience: flow state, cognitive load, and feedback loops, while giving security teams the control and visibility they need.

Want to see our award-winning UX in action? Schedule a demo to discover how Pixee can transform your workflow through thoughtful, security focused UX and design.

About Pixee

Pixee is the AI Product Security Engineer that bridges the gap between developer velocity and security needs. By automating triage and delivering trusted code fixes inside existing workflows, Pixee enables teams to remediate at scale and ship secure code at the speed of business.