At Rubrik, we believe that mission-critical tools should be as intuitive as they are powerful.
Today, we are proud to announce that the Aura Design System, the consumer-grade enterprise software design system behind Rubrik Security Cloud, has been recognized with the prestigious 2026 iF Design Award. Of the 10,000+ entries from 68 countries, Aura stood out for its consumer-grade look and feel, ease of use, simplicity, and rigorous design.
Backed by a design team holding more than 30 patents, Aura is built on intensive research, exhaustive testing, and a commitment to accessibility. With ease of use cited as one of the key reasons that customers buy Rubrik, we’ve shown that when software looks better and is intuitive, users are empowered to scale their impact. This gives businesses an efficient way to get results while lowering TCO.
This marks Rubrik’s third major design accolade in four years, building on our Red Dot Design Award in 2023 and iF Design Award in 2024. This is a testament to our team’s focus on craft, quality, and the commitment to creating a customer experience that forms the foundation of enterprise software design. This commitment to craftsmanship and user-centric design has provided the perfect springboard for launching our latest easy-to-use AI solutions.
What Is the Aura Design System?
The Aura Design System is Rubrik's enterprise software UX design system: a unified, scalable platform of extensible components, design tokens, styles, a 600+ custom icon set, UI/UX templates, and UX writing guidelines. Built through rigorous user testing with customers across industries and company sizes, Aura provides the visual and interaction foundation for Rubrik Security Cloud, enabling consistent, accessible, high-quality interfaces across the entire platform.
How is Aura Different From Other Enterprise Software Design Systems?
Aura represents a paradigm shift in a category often defined by uninspired interfaces of black, white, and shades of grey. Most enterprise security tools were built as feature checklists, with flat navigation, dense data tables, and interfaces that assume unlimited time and attention. The result: slower response times, higher error rates, and cognitive overload precisely when clarity matters most.
Aura was built on the premise that enterprise software doesn't have to be boring; it can be simultaneously beautiful and rigorous. By infusing consumer-grade aesthetics and ease of use into industrial-strength software, we created a unique approach to enterprise software UX design. Aura has a vibrant color palette, custom illustrations, and a dark theme that brings accessibility and clarity to complex enterprise software. Aura's interface reduces cognitive load, surfaces useful information at the right moment, and guides practitioners through complex workflows.
Even in high-stakes moments, Aura helps users remain calm, in control, and empowered by innovation that’s best in the industry.
The Consumer-Grade Edge: Aura’s Award-Winning Approach to Enterprise Software UX Design
Let’s take a closer look at how Aura is redefining the enterprise software user experience—a key reason customers choose Rubrik—and why it captured the attention of the iF Design Award jury.
Aura builds external trust through reliable, easy-to-use UIs during high-stakes operations. Internally, it allows teams to focus on novel problem-solving since all building blocks are accessible, tested, and secure.
Here’s why Aura drives customers’ decision to purchase Rubrik:
The quality and ease of use of our UI consistently ranks as one of the top reasons customers choose to purchase Rubrik over competitors.
Customers rate our product’s usability 4.8/5, a nearly perfect score.
Product UX innovation has always been a focus at Rubrik: we are proud of our 30 design-related patents!
In addition to the Red Dot Design Award 2023 and the iF Design award 2024 for excellence in software design, we were nominated for the UX design awards during this time. This industry recognition makes Aura stand out.
In an era of simplified development, consumer-grade design is no longer a luxury for enterprise products—it is a critical differentiator.
Bringing Clarity to Complexity
Aura merges consumer-grade aesthetics with critical production-ready reliability. The design system expands upon Rubrik's brand metaphor (data blocks brought into coherence within a vast space) with luminous gradients, opacities, and motion. This creates a visual hierarchy that allows users to bypass noise, instantly visualize data streams, and target anomalies.
Strategic Scalability and Engineering Velocity
The efficiency of Aura's system of design tokens accelerates product velocity by enabling features and global UI changes to ship rapidly without sacrificing quality. For example, by moving beyond a simple UI kit into a fully tokenized system, Aura serves as a single source of truth that allows a core team of just five designers to efficiently support an entire design organization.
Additionally, the efficiency of Aura's design tokens is profound, allowing our team to release a net-new High-Contrast Theme (more on why that’s important below) quickly and to efficiently roll out core style updates across the entire live UI.
Adhering to Accessibility
Aura was built to empower all our users to be in control. That’s why a key differentiator is Aura’s sophisticated 3-theme UI. Recognizing that our users operate under diverse conditions, Aura supports Dark, Bright, and High-Contrast modes. The High-Contrast theme is engineered for users with visual impairments, while the system’s lightweight architecture ensures peak performance even on low-bandwidth hardware or legacy monitors.
Aura: Where Industrial Strength Meets Consumer-Grade Brilliance
Winning the 2026 iF Design Award validates our conviction: Mission-critical enterprise software tools can be as intuitive and engaging as consumer tech. In an industry long dominated by dull shades of grey and "feature-first" complexity, Aura has proven that beauty and industrial rigor don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
As we continue to push the boundaries of enterprise software design, the Aura Design System ensures that our users have a world-class, consumer-grade experience to guide them.
Explore Rubrik in action today.