Next Gen VPN Client Prototype

 

Next Generation VPN Client

Context and Role: Individual contributor and Team Lead at Cisco. Team lead across five states on an internal consulting project at Cisco. I worked mostly with the internal customers - Security Services BU and other members of my team, a visual designer and a software engineer.

Background: This was a project that merged two existing products, a VPN product and a WIFI network product into one. The idea was to hide the complexity of network and VPN management and present a simpler more task-oriented abstraction to the user. A paper describing the design was presented at CHIMIT 2010.

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Scenarios

 

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Design Principles

Some design principles which were developed in conjunction with the product stakeholders and used to drive the design...

Primary

  • Invisible
  • Simple
  • Helpful

 

Secondary

  • 95% of day-to-day tasks from the flyout
  • Act more like a cell phone than a computer
  • Minimize cognitive burden
  • No in-between states
  • Guide the user
  • User in control - not the system
  • Follow Platform Guidelines
  • Doesn't Crash

 

 

Navigation and Scenarios

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Prototype

Adobe Flex prototype with "Control Panel" to configure the various networking states. For example, first or second use and different environments (home, work, or "Starbucks").

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Usability Test Results

The prototype was tested in a usability test. Users were technical and non-technical.

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