SASE @ Cisco Cloud Security

Cisco had a vision of creating a SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) product to replace their legacy VPN product of AnyConnect. The project fell under Cisco Cloud Security, and I was fortunate enough to be the design lead on it. This was a massive project with dozens of engineers, many design partners, and only one lead designer (me). To meet the challenge, I relied heavily on research from the very beginning. I spent months conducting user interviews, analyzing the competition, and drafting MVP designs to share with design partners.
Company
Cisco Cloud Security
Role
Product Designer

Solving the problem of zero-trust network access

Cisco's long-time VPN product AnyConnect was a widely-used product to secure remote workers and remote access into organizations. However, AnyConnect was a very old product carrying a massive amount of tech debt. Beyond that, many new solutions had hit the market. Products like VPNaaS or SASE were making it clear that AnyConnect would be replaced at Cisco with a more modern solution: a zero-trust network.

I was the lead designer on the SASE product from the very beginning. It was such an exciting experience from me. I led Design Thinking workshops, interviewed countless customers, helped Product Managers iterate on early visions, and plenty more. Here's how we solved the problem:

Uncovering users' pains

AnyConnect carried friction across the entire experience, from admins to users. Admins struggled to setup AnyConnect, and users frequently ran into connection problems. We started by interviewing internal IT admins at Cisco. We uncovered the pain points they experienced, and we uncovered pain points our customers experienced.

From there, we established a group of customers that agreed to work with us as design partners. We held workshops, daily meetings, and logged all their frustrations. From there we began iterating on a fresh solution.

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Start with the MVP

With the help of a massive team (and so many design partners), we began integrating the Remote Access feature into Cisco Umbrella. We had an established product in Umbrella, so we needed to carve out a small corner of the product for a big feature.

One of the biggest ask from design partners was to make the setup of the service much quicker than AnyConnect. So we reduced as much friction as possible from the onboarding.

One particular piece of feedback from design partners was how much they disliked stepper wizards in the Umbrella product. It made me realize how over-utilized wizards were in product design. Users like to scroll (see: social media). Users don't want to see their inputs disappear. So we worked tirelessly on making configurations forms not just usable but delightful.