Timeline: Jan’15 – Dec’15
In 2015, I worked on Ciena’s enterprise products such as MyPortal and Matrix Director. These web applications were based on network as a service model. MyPortal, a self serve web application for enterprise network administrators, worked as a north bound interface for a thick client Virtual WAN.
My role
UX Designer
Domain, personas and use cases
Service providers and enterprises usually require highly skilled personnel to manage these networks, therefore, these users are expert level users. I relied heavily on Ciena’s learning portal and subject matter experts to learn about various traditional networking concepts and new innovations such as software defined networking and network functions virtualization. I also, leveraged legacy product documentation to understand various use cases that I was supposed to address. I created a user persona – Enterprise admin user by taking to some of the similar users that were available on site.
Task flows
For each major use case, I created taskflows that were then translated into low fidelity wireframes. A major use case for MyPortal app was to reserve bandwidth on demand. For this, a new taskflow was created that was a huge improvement from the legacy version as it reduced cognitive load and amount of information that was required to be filled on the form.
I created interactive mockup to communicate the interactions and flows. This helped developers in mapping the accurate experience while creating building the product. We received increased interest from our customers after this release. This product became generally available for our customers in late 2015 with active subscription.