One way trip to the cloud
Aerohive Networks is a wireless network technology company, they wanted to transfrom their business model from being hardware centric into a software company.
CHALLENGE
The challenge was to re-imagine and redesign existing web-based product without disrupting the business to embrace organization’s new product strategy. In order to achieve that, the below challenges were ahead of me:
➜ Design a new cloud based Network Management Platform that makes wireless network simple, scalable & actionable leveraging big data.
➜ Enable self-service SaaS experience
➜ Quickly create few small yet significant ‘design wins’ that demonstrated the vision to get buy-in.
➜ Evangelize and grow the UX team.
This case study showcases my full spectrum of product design spanning across strategy, user centric innovation, information architecture, data visualization, interaction design, visual design, user testing and shipping 2 versions of the product.
The three part story
The challenges that were beyond just designing the product, we had to show the value of UX and build confidence across the organization to get buy-in and funding for the UX team.
We phased the design into three parts that will enable us to do both.
The story of the transformation journey
Part 1
Getting the house in order
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Reimagine and redesign the product
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Modernize & Simplify network management experience
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Build UX credibility
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Think big picture and demonstrate the potential
Part 2
Fuse modern UX & vision
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Showcase the potential of big data platform through data viz.
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Craft a scalable and a modular experience
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Add additional key features
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Set stage for SaaS experience
Part 3
To the next level
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Innovate and add new differentiating features
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Enable SaaS experience
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Integrate with other suite of products
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Set stage for API strategy (Design and Technical)
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Add additional key features
Part 1
Getting the house in order
In order to start the journey of transformation, I started by understanding the wireless domain, the current product, the customer journey, defined the key persona and started to think about elements that can be enhanced without disrupting the BAU.
To start off, we focussed on a key persona of a network administrator and a small but significant piece of the product – the network configuration piece for the first release. Reason being if we could simplify the current complex process of policy configuration, we could definitely score well with internal stakeholders and would help us move forward and establish a design focussed process.
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Choose the configuration flow to enhance and facelift.
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Highly visible, high impact due to its complicated nature.
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Important flow which has complaints of complexity.
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Could set the stage for design centric process.
Lots of discussions with product managers, senior leadership, sales, engineering and lot of brainstorming with my director followed by numerous whiteboard sketches and wireframes and iterations we were ready with the first set of design for the product.
Initial research artifacts, empathy mapping, workflows and brainstorming with the project management
complete user journey map to understand the product
final wireframes for configuration workflow
final wireframes for configuration workflow
Outcome
The first release (named Mercury) was very well received and during this process we made lot of progress in evangelizing UX and design driven thinking in the organization.
We were able to drastically reduce the time taken for the configuration from 45 minutes to under 25 mins. The goal was to get to 15 mins. With this we had the buy-in from the leadership to work on the entire redesign.
visual designs for the first internal release (mvp)
visual designs for the first internal release (mvp)
Part 2
Fuse modern UX & vision
We had very positive reception for the Mercury release and were also successful in building the credibility of UX and design driven process. Had to keep the momentum going while take the product to the next level and started looking for opportunities to modernize and enhance the UX.
Key areas:
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Re-imagined the Information Architecture of the application.
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Introduced a new dashboard with much more meaningful visualizations that prompted action.
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Redesigned and launched the planner tool with google map integration and modern interactions.
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Introduced the concept of a global filter that is consistent across the application.
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Socialized the new IA across the organization including the executive leadership to gain alignment.
artifacts for dashboard research and information architecture
New navigation and global filter explorations
Wifi planner tool wireframes
Wifi planner tool wireframes across multiple floors
dashboard design explorations
dashboard design wireframes with details
Outcome
The second release (named Saturn) got everybody’s attention and the below are the big areas of impact:
- The newly designed dashboard enables the user to access the power of the underlying big data by converting the data into powerful yet simple visualizations that enable quick actions.
- Consistent global filters make the whole network data context specific and very relevant for any actions.
- The visual time-selector with trend equips the user to check historical data and compare over a period of time – the duration is configurable providing an additional avenue for revenue generation.
At the end of Saturn, I conducted a usability study with real customers, and very interesting observations lead to few updates that are a part of the road-map.
Integrating the other suite of products and business systems were a big part of the release to follow.
Part 3
To the next level
The new enhanced product was released for limited number of customers. The Apollo project now became the product everyone were looking forward to and seen as the future for the organization! The expectations were very very high and this was seen as a product that was the first such beautiful and simple for a networking enterprise platform.
The challenge now was to innovate – add new features and make it ready for the API strategy – customer self service and 3rd party developer friendly.
Highlights:
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Enhanced the experience based on usability findings
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Conceptualized and realized 360 entity views for network entities – first of its kind in the network management
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Created yet another first of its kind troubleshooting tool with data visualization and simplified workflows
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Defined a design language and an interaction pattern library
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Integrated and created flows with internal business processes (SalesForce etc) for the self-service experience (SaaS)
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Conducted usability evaluation sessions with actual customers, sales engineers (internal) and partners.
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Collaborated with the customers and the product to uncover the need for a 360 degree view and a troubleshooting need.
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Addressed a new persona of Tier 1 Help Desk Associate
Integrations with other systems
Integrations with other systems
360 degree entity pages – Access points
360 degree entity pages – USERs
Troubleshooting – options
Live Troubleshooting
Troubleshooting – the 4 way handshake
Troubleshooting – the different scenarios
Outcome : Part 3
Areas of impact:
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Streamlined the sales process and integrated with the internal systems which was a huge jump in productivity for the internal users and a seamless experience to the end customers. (the MSPs and partners)
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Refined the configuration flows to create quick wizards with default settings, this brought the configuration time to below 15 mins, with no support calls. The best was 8 min! Before this tool the time to config was more than 45 mins with multiple support calls.
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Created a design language and design library for the new designers and for making the rest of the applications consistent.
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This is an innovative concept that gives the 360 degree view of the different entities that are in the network. The metaphor of timeline is consistent across the application provides a quick view to spot anomalies. This is accessible across the application through a global search.
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The real-time troubleshooting tool is yet another ground-breaking first of its kind tool in the wi-fi networking domain. This tool not only provides pro-active monitoring activity on the devices, but also suggests a remedy to fix. The data visualization shows the stage in which the client is and along with the number of attempts made.
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With the troubleshooting tool, we addressed a new persona – a tier 1 help-desk associate
Design language
Design components library
Coverage in the industry
