Innovation at Cisco
Intro
Cisco DNA is one of the world's biggest computer networking design and management tools. Networking engineers reply on the platform heavily to set up and manage networks across diverse sites for large customer bases.
In this project I worked on redefining 60% of the 3000+ page product to match the user's mental model and address pain points.
My Role
Project Lead: Design thinking workshops to obtain insights, validation, and data synthesis
5 on immediate UX feature team, 50 on larger UX product team
Impact
The designs were showcased to over 150,000 attendees at conferences like Cisco Live Australia, where one was featured in the keynote opening. Internally, my design materials influenced other teams and became part of Cisco’s broader design evangelization efforts, reinforcing the company’s software innovation goals
15%
→
90%
Increase of users who completed their tasks during testing
THE PROBLEM
Designing a network is messy and complicated. Cisco’s current offerings did not address those pain points
THE OPPORTUNITY
How might we enable users to design and implement their networks in a streamlined process that fulfills a variety of their needs?
The user is highly knowledgeable, tech-savvy; manages large networks
Network Engineer
Makes sure all the devices can talk to each other… like building invisible roads for information to travel on. They build these roads so everyone can talk to each other smoothly and safely.
Examples: Thinking about all the routers, wifi points, and virtual security for all devices on university campuses, warehouses, and retail stores
WORKSHOP FINDINGS
The user's' processes are complicated, iterative,
collaborative, and situational
DESIGN
Designing the flow was about rethinking the current form while matching the user’s mental model with the product’s information architecture across 3000+ pages
SYSTEMS THINKING
Before thinking about what the user sees, I thought about how it would fit into our underlying infrastructure
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I redesigned 60% of the product
Before
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Disjointed and linear stepper format
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No ability to save or collaborate
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Time pressure
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Does not fit every mental model of the user
After
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Contextual
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Flexible
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Collaborative
GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE
Users typically work from a bird's eye view, working from the bigger picture to the smaller details.
All the user needs to do is drag and drop
GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE
They can zoom in to add details for one component, or apply to all like-components
GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE
And sketch connections straight into the platform to eventually build their dream network
We had some small wins sprinkled in too...
ONE SIDEBAR TO RULE THEM ALL
A new pattern captured for the library!
I defined what a sidebar should be to our team; when it should be used and how to adapt for all of the main use cases.
Results
After conducting a workshop and interviews with C-level customers, we achieved some success and next points of development
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Prototype matches user mental model: ~90% of users completed their task in the allocated amount of time, compared to the 15% in the existing flow
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~95% of features customers had mentioned are fully or mostly covered by the product
Impact
The designs were showcased to over 150,000 attendees at conferences like Cisco Live Australia, where one was featured in the keynote opening. Internally, my design materials influenced other teams and became part of Cisco’s broader design evangelization efforts, reinforcing the company’s software innovation goals.
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