PROJECT GOAL

Launch a mobile app allowing CX Cloud customers to stay connected to their network even when they are away from their computer.

MY ROLE: PRODUCT DESIGN & STRATEGY DIRECTOR

UX design lead for MVP definition & concepts
Product strategy lead
Design deliverables - e2e
Managed research planning and execution
Led executive & ELT design reviews
Stakeholder engagement: Director and VP levels
Mentored the working team of 7 designers, strategists and researchers

CX CLOUD MOBILE APP

This is a promotional video that we created for our demo booth at CiscoLive. Full case study is available upon request.

DESIGN STRATEGY

Mobile notifications have become ubiquitous. They are far more user friendly than web browser notifications, so we took a mobile first design approach. However, users also told us that they would not complete complex workflows on a mobile app, they would wait until they were back in front of a computer with a larger screen. This meant we needed real-time consistency across both channels and we needed a way for users to flag specific items on mobile so they could easily find them when they were back on their computer. This is why we worked on mobile and web experiences simultaneously.

PAIN POINTS

Users get too many notifications from Cisco
Cisco notifications come via email from many different teams
Users don't want to look at email to find alerts
Users lack the detailed controls they want
Marketing messages are mixed-in with important alerts
CX Cloud is not connected to any notification systems

BACKGROUND

CX Cloud users needed a way to stay up to date on important network issues, but CX Cloud has no proactive mechanism to communicate them.

CX Cloud users have no way to know about important network issues without logging in to the app on their computer.

PROBLEM STATEMENT

DISCOVERY

We quickly spun up multiple user research activities, including quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews to find out what areas to prioritize. At the same time, our strategist started analyzing all of the different events that could potentially trigger a notification.

Effective notification management is crucial for minimizing distractions, reducing stress, and prioritizing information"
Rahul - Network Architect

"Tailoring notifications to specific business needs with real-time alerts help maintain focus, manage complex environments, and stay informed"
Claire - Sr. Systems Engineer

USER DEFINITION & RESEARCH

Through research we were able to define three main personas, two on the customer side, and one on the partner side.
Example: Customer: Enactor (Proprietary information excluded in image below)

DEFINITION & PRIORITIZATION

What is a notification? What warrants sending a notification? Do we have triggers for these things already or do we need to build them? These are the questions we needed to answer.

SO WHAT NOW?

We partnered with the research team to identify what events warranted a notification.

To do this, we mapped out the customer journeys and the corresponding use cases to identify notification opportunities.

We created a prioritization matrix and performed a quick analysis on our list of opportunities, and grouped them by type, behavior, and priority. Once we had our initial prioritized list, we worked closely with the product managers and business analysts to refine the list.

Now it was back to user testing to validate our assumptions. The results of testing gave us a starting point for design and dev LOE and resourcing estimates.

WHERE IT GETS INTERESTING

To provide a good customer experience, we needed to convince PM & Dev to align the roadmaps of three different projects and synchronize feature launches across the Notifications Platform, Web App, and Mobile App.

Here is one example of why alignment was so important:
1. User receives a mobile app push notification
2. Item is "Flagged" for later, which is a common use case
3. User logs in to computer to follow up - "Flagged" list needs to be available on desktop app

MOBILE APP

KEY
FEATURES

DESKTOP APP

NOTIFICATIONS

KEY FEATURES LIST

Detailed controls, filters and settings: focus areas, criticality levels, channels, time boundaries, etc.
Real time synchronization across mobile and web channels
Flagging - ability to flag notifications or items (ex: case, asset, license) for seamless pickup at a later time
Ability to assign to a team member
Create a contextual (support) case functionality from a notification

SETTINGS

We are talking about engineers here, so it's no surprise they want detailed control over what, how and when the receive notifications. The most important settings were:

Criticality
Frequency
Channel: mobile push, email, etc.

FLAGGING

Flagging items, especially items that are experiencing issues was a highly rated mobile app feature according to our research. Flagging allowed users to bookmark things that they could easily find later when they were back at their computer. Mobile users wanted to stay apprised of network issues, but didn't necessarily want to troubleshoot or fix them from their phone.

ASSIGN TO USER

Sometimes flagging isn't enough, so we created the ability to assign an item to a team member. This allows items to be routed to the correct person immediately.