CISCO: WIRELESS NETWORKING

OVERVIEW

2017 was a significant transition for Cisco’s Security & Networking business. In January 2017, Cisco gained $1billion dollars in market share due to providing a new wireless networking management experience in lieu of it’s legacy product, the Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE). 

MY ROLE

I led the design of the new wireless networking management experience which included the re-design of Cisco’s legacy product, the Identity Services Engine since the outset of the project in January 2016. 

Since March 2017, I have been leading a larger company-wide effort to evolve Cisco’s networking software platform and address customer pain points related to network management as a whole. 

THE BUSINESS PROBLEM

Cisco’s Identity Services Engine (ISE) is a software application that provides network access control solutions to enterprise customers. While this product has gained much traction in the enterprise market, Cisco was losing close to $1billion dollar in sales in K-12 and Higher Education schools.

RESEARCH

Why weren’t K-12 and Higher Education schools buying Cisco’s Identity Services Engine (ISE)? What about the product was deterring them from purchasing? 

I set out on a mission to find out. 

Participants: 4 current K-12 / Higher Education customers and 4 potential K-12 / Higher education customers
Research Type: We chose to do contextual inquiry, on-site interviews to really understand how participants use the product and how they use other products in their environment. 

My colleague and I set out on a one week road trip across the country and came back with tons of data! 

Here were some major pain-points that we were hearing:

1. The whole set up process is extremely difficult. It takes usually 2 days to set up the network with ISE, make sure it’s stable and running.
2. It’s hard for customers to troubleshoot with ISE. Searching for common keywords is not possible. 
3. Many customers expressed the difficulty in understanding the workflow in ISE. They expressed their fear in pressing the wrong button and suddenly their network is down. 
4. ISE constantly breaks down and it's hard for the user the understand the source of the breakdown. 
5. There are a lot of powerful tools within ISE that are all useful but to different job roles within an organization. 

UX ADVOCACY

After doing the research it was clear to us that there were many problems to solve for our users. However, it was unclear what should be prioritized for the business. So we held a workshop with key stakeholders in product management, engineering and user experience teams to help figure this out. 

Workshop Goals:

1.    Get clarity of the product vision for ISE. 
2.    Train product management and engineering to empathize with the users of ISE. 
3.    Prioritize which user problems to tackle next. 

THE DESIGN PROBLEM

How might we make the wireless setup process easier for users? 

THE PROCESS

OUTCOMES

1. Cisco’s Security and Networking business gained $1billion in market share. 
2. I was awarded a rare company values award for delivering quick execution while leading innovation on this project.
3. Went from a setup process that took 2 days to 5 minutes. Here's a video from a Technical Marketing Engineer on our team explaining how easy the setup process is. 

CHALLENGES

1. Users of networking management tools use command line interface (CLI). So while users want the ease of use in a simple user interface is easier, they also want the flexibility to see and edit the code that is being written. 

2. Clearly communicating to backend architects the flexibilities that are needed to achieve optimal user experience.