NFM
Networking for Novices
CISCO | NFM -Nexus Fabric Manager
OBJECTIVE
Tailor product to a new market segment. Simplify the process of building and managing data center fabric lifecycle on a web interface.
Role - Manager, UX Design
Design team consisted of another UX designer and Visual designer. Worked alongside Product Analyst, Technical Lead, Engineering and VP of Product (Stakeholder). As a Lead UX designer I take responsibility to improve on the user experience of the product. Understand the scope of the project and come up with a road map to solve the problems. Conduct Heuristic evaluation based on industry best practices and usability testing with the key tasks identified. Based on the data analysis and educated assumptions created recommendations on the user experience. Worked with visual designer to create high fidelity mockups.
DESIGN PROCESS
Source- Key Characteristics of Service Design (Thinking)
““Aleya is great to work with, dependable and does quality work. She is sharp and provide great feedback.””
Project Background
Cisco acquired a networking startup company. They want to market their product to small to mid-size companies. The assumption is that such companies don’t have dedicated network IT specialists. Incorporate Cisco branding.
Therefore, the user should be able to easily use the product with limited networking domain knowledge.
DISCOVER
Understand the application capability, the domain, persona needs goals business objective and technical constraints on device and timeline.
KEY TASKS- Shown in a visual depiction
Understand the ‘Happy’ path for each task. Shown here one such task here. For each of the tasks I understood the current flow. By going through this exercise I began to understand why some users would be frustrated or confused at certain points.
RESEARCH
10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design. Followed Jakob Nielsen's 10 general principles for interaction design. They are called "heuristics" because they are broad rules of thumb and not specific usability guidelines.
This was done by two of us UX designers on the team.
USABILITY TESTING 1:1
The METHOD: 5 Users, 6 Tasks
Source: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/why-you-only-need-to-test-with-5-users/
User Testing with only 5 users to improve the design in an iterative format is what Jakob Neilson advices.
Usability Testing. 1:1 usability interviews with participants - expert and novice network specialists were asked to perform 6 tasks. This was done by two of us UX designers on the team. The NFM product and technical lead were also present during these sessions. A detailed report was written with our observations.
““Creative, result oriented, good team player and fun to work with individual.””
KEY OBSERVATIONS
Recommendations Summary
EMPTY STATE: Redesign empty state pages, providing visual guidance, contextual hints, and crisp Call-to-Action buttons.
USER CONTROL & FREEDOM: Users tend to start all tasks by clicking on the switch. To match users’ mental model we recommend making functionality for Create a port channel and Associate broadcast domain available from the Topology view and put Call-to-Action button on the respective screens.
NAVIGATION & IA: Reduce the number of tabs in the Navigation Tab and change its typeface.
HELP, FEEDBACK & ERROR: Refine the visual display of the feedback mode to make it noticeable for users. Need special attention to symbols and dialogues in the forms.
UX/UI SOLUTIONS
After going over the recommendations, the NFM product and technical team choose a few aspects to change.
RESULT
45% increase in users completing all tasks
Received positive feedback from new users
Product was successfully launched
Stakeholders were delighted with the new experience
““Aleya is an exceptional professional. She brings expertise and experience with love for what she does which is essential to the success of any team and any project. Aleya is very creative but she is also alert to what the customer really needs. She is always accommodating customer requirements with market trends, best practices and effective techniques, in such a way that business goals are achieved without sacrificing aesthetics and style, giving a unique personality to the work delivered.””