"Why does setting up a robot test require an engineer?"

Splunk Synthetic Monitoring is like hiring a robot employee to test your website 24/7 — checking checkout, login, and signup every 5 minutes so you find problems before customers do.

But to set up that robot, someone had to know the system inside out.

"When the robot isn't watching, real people pay the price."

Rent the Runway lets you rent a dress for your wedding, your interview, or your big night. Browse, select, book — it shows up at your door.

But in 2019, their system went down for 11 days.

Imagine renting a dress for your wedding. The site glitches. Your order doesn't go through. The dress never ships.

Your wedding. Ruined.

That's why companies like Rent the Runway use Splunk Synthetic Monitoring — a robot that checks their site every 5 minutes, from 100+ locations, before real customers notice anything's wrong.

The tool existed. But only specialists could use it — so most teams didn't.

"Build step by step. Hope you get it right."

Before: Manual setup. Step by step. Option by option.

• Manual config. Every step.

• Know the system — or fail.

What if setup was already done?

Before: Build the test manually — step by step, option by option. Know the system or get it wrong.

Now: Click through your site in Chrome. Import the recording. Done. The robot copies what you already did.

The insight was simple: don't make people learn a new system. Capture what they already do.

"I couldn't fix everything. So I picked the one door that mattered."

"After: One path.— imported in seconds, not built manually."

I led design on this project with one PM and two engineers. No time to redesign the whole system. So I focused on one entry point — Chrome Import — because that's where setup died for most users.

"8 hours → 15 minutes. Engineers → Everyone."

Big customers chose Splunk because of this feature. Monitoring shifted from specialists to product teams.