Dynamic Asset Groups

Solving 3 years of customer complaints by redesigning asset group management and shipping and MVP in just 2 months.

Summary

I led a team of 6 in redesigning asset group management for Cisco's customer experience platform, ‘CX Cloud’.

The solution updates asset groups automatically using filter rules and automates a manual process.

I successfully influenced stakeholders to adopt an iterative release cycle and ship in just 2 instead of 6 months (3x faster).

This resolved 3 years of customer complaints and received enthusiastic customer feedback.

Shipped Aug 2024

MVP Launch

Shipped in 6 → 2 months

3x Faster Launch

Overview

Client/Company

Cisco

Duration

Feb – Aug 2024

Team (17)

3 Product Designers

1 Visual Designer

1 Content Designer

1 UX Researcher

1 Product Manager

1 Engineering Manager

3 Backend Engineers

6 Frontend Engineers

My Role

Lead Designer

Interaction Designer

Prototyping

Project Manager

3 years of complaints

Groups organize assets logically, speeding up workflows for similar assets.

Customers complained for 3 years about how cumbersome managing asset groups is.

Cumbersome

Groups did not update automatically, as assets are selected individually from a list.

Disconnected

Groups do not update automatically when you select assets from a list.

The 1-year-old redesign faced many challenges

I was tasked with helping engineers with questions during implementation.

I noticed 2 big issues with the 1-year-old redesign by a different designer:

  1. Cluttered UI

  2. Outdated design patterns

3 Keys To Success

Once I got buy-in for the redesign, I structured the project into three areas to focus on.

Contained Experience

Simplified Filters

Edge Case Handling

Contained Experience

Static asset groups required network admins to manually add/remove assets from each spreadsheet.

Asset groups update automatically because of filter rules. 

This eliminated the entire manual editing process for admins and contained the experience to CX Cloud.

Simplified Filters

Taking a step back from the previous designer’s solutions, I explored alternative filters.

And I found an alternative: SQL editor to define filter rules.

No-code worked better for all experience levels instead of just experts.

versus

No-code interface

SQL editor

Edge Case Handling

Contextual Error States

A generic ‘something went wrong’ doesn’t help resolve issues.

I collaborated with backend engineers to create error states that network admins

  1. could understand and

  2. know how to recover from.

After

Before

Empty States Guide Users

Getting started can be hard.

I designed empty states to highlight primary actions so that users can easily identify what to do.

Simplifying Both User And Migration Experience

Static and dynamic asset groups coexist (for now).

  1. Customers can use dynamic groups right away

  2. Existing customers can gradually migrate their static to dynamic groups

I also convinced the product owner to cut manual editing features, further simplifying migration.

How Launching FASTER Made A BETTER Product

At first, software engineers estimated 6 months to implement.

I persuaded stakeholders to ship iteratively instead of waiting for all features to be implemented (waterfall approach).

I led 3 sprint planning meetings with Frontend and Backend SWEs and cut requirements, downsized user stories, and defined the MVP feature set.

This reduced the time to gain user insights from 6 to 2 months.

Customers Loved The Redesign

The MVP shipped in August 2024.

Several customers contacted the Product Owner to say their problems were fixed.

“This is already a great enhancement!”
— Alexander Rauch (from Cisco customer forum)

Next Up: More Versatility

We gained critical insights fast by launching in just 2 months:

Senior admins need more flexibility to make filters work for more complex scenarios.

How We Created More Flexibility

  • Filter groups: Handle more complex scenarios.

  • More rules: Filtering assets by IP ranges

  • Switchable Connectors: AND & OR

  • Interchangeable Operators: is, is not, contains, starts with, ends with

Explore More Projects

AI-driven Self-Help

Created AI-guided troubleshooting. Saved Cisco $15M annually.

Infrastructure Platform

Modernized 30-year-old on-premise solutions into a SaaS platform. Secured 24 large customer renewals.