Cisco ACI

I created Cisco ACI’s first-ever content guide to bring a common voice and tone to a highly technical product portfolio.

The idea was that it would be used by designers and developers to write copy for products, since there were no other UX writers besides me. It would also serve as the basis of a content strategy practice within the design team ( a very long range goal).

As I created the guide, I shared it with my design team for feedback and their input.

Improving product UX meant communicating highly technical information quickly, clearly, and succinctly. My goal when creating in-product content was that at no point should a customer feel lost or confused about where they were, or what they needed to do next when using ACI's products.

In order to be sure that what I was creating was usable, I guerrilla tested it around the office with people who had no connection to the project. This helped me gain real feedback about areas where the content required chnages to be more user-friendly.

There were no key users to design for, which led to a scattered design approach across products. Working with my department lead, I identified late, middle, and early-career users as our key audiences. 

These audiences would serve as the basis of all our product design efforts going forward. A secondary use of these personas was to use them to keep things in perspective when working with highly technical, cross-functional collaborators.

One piece of user feedback we constantly received was that customers had no way of quickly grasping product basics.

In order to overcome this and to further our goal of making our products user-friendly, I put together short, simple product guides to assist new users. They contained the basics of what users needed to know at first contact, the location of important features, and initial customization of the product to suit their needs.

Shown here is a page from the quick start guide for Cisco Network Insights – Resources (NIR).