01. Overview
My Cisco Entitlements (MCE) is a free and easy to use platform which leverages the construct of Smart Accounts(SA). You can use this secure platform to get a consolidated view of all your assets and entitlements, including services, subscriptions, licenses, and devices. This platform provides you with insights into your business and helps manage your Cisco IT assets and entitlements.
I was focusing on Entitlement Services & Subscriptions category and My Customer Engagement (MVP) design, working with team of 6 designers, 2 Project Managers, 5+ Business Analysts (Cisco team) & 15+ developers
02. Discovery
Understand the whole structure (Information Architecture)
Before we started working on the design, we need to focus on understanding the whole MCE structure, including the relationship between the entitlements, asset management and renewal readiness (which is after assets check, users could renew the devices and so on.)
After doing many trial version for the MCE research and discussion, we figure it out the MCE Information Architecture, which is the entry point from the marketing landing page to view all the customers, then divided into three mainly categories, including the MCE Learning, My Customer Engagements(asset management) and Renewal Readiness.
The Painpoints & Challenges
- Hardly to understand the application process and get insights from the current system.
- Complicated logic and terms, learning curve takes long time.
- No single view of Cisco software and hardware owned.
- Uncertain about what is owned how to renew products.
- Multiple tools and disparate locations for manage licenses.
- Do not understand the value of software features…
Business Goals
- Real-time insights: The platform provides you with a simple view of products and services, along with activation and utilization metrics
- Optimize Cost: You can plan and control usages of your products and services
- Enhance business continuity: You can also proactively identify products and services at risk and adhere to compliance.
- Secure and consolidated user access: It simplifies the way you manage your information by providing your organization a platform that provides secure and consolidated user access.
Our Users(Personas)
After set the IA diagram, we decided to create two type of personas for internal and external purposes.
- The Internal User: Asset Manager – Christina
- The External User: System Admin – Teresa
Customer Journey Map
Then we defined each persona’s special customer journey map since internal and external users will have the different access permission and system experience.
03. Design Process
Early Concept Design
From paper prototyping，sketches to grey scale mock-ups for concept design, we did lots of low-fidelity design works.
High-fidelity Design
I would like to showcase the example for Landing Page and Devices Page as High-fidelity Design.
Before – Landing Page
- The main navigation was not covered all categories, should be simple and self-explanatory.
- The dropdown menu is not intuitive for users to explore all the insights and features.
- The current left menu did not reflect the power of entitlement and asset management in the right way.
After – Landing Page
- The updated landing page has welcome general video and introduction to give users an idea before jump into the system.
- The header navigation is simple and reflects the true value of different categories.
- Each module has a short description, also, given user “Guide me” design for better understanding the data tendency.
Before – Devices Page
- The complicated navigation system and hierarchy divided into too many pieces for users to explore..
- Bulk action button needs user several steps to apply function.
After – Devices Page
- After studying users devices pattern – Dynamic quick devices data set system was created.
- A flexible bulk action floating bar was introduced to overcome the problem of vertical and horizontal scroll.
More Features
Some other cool features for MCE project are the parts which I was joined and focusing on the “My Customer Engagement”(right now is still in MVP stage), the features are including:
- Create and Edit custom engagement
- Define who is involved in this group
- Search for specific category when select customers
- Filters narrow down searching results
- Auto generate the Engagement Summary for review and decide which will be the best next action.
04. Results
Testing & Feedback
Testing was conducted during the discovery phase to validate the mainly pain points in the current version. During the redesign: Testing was done at every milestone of the project. Figma prototypes were shared with stakeholders to get early feedback. After numerous surveys and user pilots, we launched the early platform in September 2018 for our partner Cisco and got some positive feedback after that.
Impact
After numerous days of brainstorming, iterating, designing and developing has brought the results desired for the My Cisco Entitlement platform. We were proud to present the new face of the product to our clients and we still working on some of the new features for MCE. The final business goal of MCE platform will be a light, minimalistic, and an intuitive enterprise-level but personalized for each user persona to help them achieve everything they hoped for.
