A Unifying Vision for a Segment Leader

In 2017, Cisco AppDynamics was a B2B, IT Observability leader with a product hampered by severe usability challenges. Setting up and instrumenting the product took days with weeks of training to follow. The primary interface demanded a steep learning curve and core user tasks were difficult to master—especially during moments of crisis when users needed it to work the most. 

I was hired to envision what this product should be and to spark an organizational shift toward user-centered design.

Role | Principal Product Designer

Initiative Duration | 3 months

Challenges

  • Cisco AppDynamics' core product demanded very high cognitive load, had inconsistent IA, and was unusable under pressure.

  • The product org was fractured—no shared roadmap, no user data, no consistent design input, and minimal design resources.

  • A lack of strategic vision made the product feel reactive, with no clear path forward.

Actions

Product Strategy & Research

  • Personally led user-centered vision initiative for AppD 2.0, starting with competitive research, ethnographic studies, and organizational mapping.

  • Defined critical user jobs and reframed the IA around modern information-seeking behaviors.

Experience Principles & Concept

  • Designed a new interaction model, pulling inspiration from best-in-class consumer interfaces (e.g., Gmail, Google Maps, Cars.com, Toyota Andon).

Partner Design

  • Collaborated with a parallel external redesign effort to align vision and execution.

Results

A Durable Vision

  • Created the foundational product vision that influenced AppD’s 3-year roadmap and organizational re-org.

  • Anchored FY19 product kickoff and helped launch AppDynamics' first UCD practice.

  • Helped recruit senior design talent and set the stage for a full product redesign, which entered the roadmap in 2021.

Ground the Vision in Evidence

Cisco Appdynamics IT Observability tool, circa January 2018, from a customer location

With no telemetry and limited access to users, I built a research-heavy strategy:

  • Directed offshore teams to mine public IT Ops sentiment (e.g., ITCentralStation)

  • Led competitive heuristic analyses via international partners

  • Conducted ethnographic research on-site with customers in the UK, Seattle, and San Francisco

Pain points were glaring:

  • Broken navigation and disconnected IA

  • Complex, unintuitive alerting (“Health Rules”)

  • Confusing, unusable visualizations of system topology (“Flow Map”)

After nearly a dozen customer site visits, 3 urgent user demands became clear:

  • Users need to simply see what’s wrong.

  • Users need to analyze the right issue.

  • Users need to take immediate action.

I translated these demands into information-seeking behaviors borrowed from library sciences:

  • Seek the unknown

  • Explore what’s vaguely known

  • Find what’s definitively known

  • Re-find previously identified insights

Based on these inputs, I gathered inspiration across a range of relevant consumer experiences to establish a concept.

  • A smart inbox for triage and alerts (inspired by Gmail)

  • Global topology views (like Google Maps)

  • Intuitive filtering (Cars.com model)

  • Clear, high-signal problem surfacing (Toyota Andon)

New Navigation concept, March 2018

Scale the Vision Through Collaboration

Midway through development, I learned of a competing redesign effort underway with an external agency. I sought them out to collaborate and merge our strategies. We aligned our design approach, borrowing their UI but leveraging my IA, and presented a cohesive concept at our FY19 product kickoff event.

Outcomes:

  • The concept served as a North Star for the organization, anchoring PKO 2019,

  • It drove internal momentum, and helped justify a product re-org in 2019

  • This project was used repeatedly to recruit new senior design leaders and catalyze AppDynamics’ first UCD practice

  • While infrastructure limitations delayed delivery, the concept was added to the roadmap in 2021

Final designs, done in collaboration with Robert Riccetti

Artifacts