CloudMondo – Cloud-based Platform for WiFi Device Management

Principal Interaction Designer in charge of UX for the company’s 6 interactive products:

  • Personal home/business wi-fi manager (iOS + Android) (now blazeX)
  • Tablet-based Network Operation Center for cloud-managed wi-fi devices (iOS + Android) (now blazeNOQ)
  • Web-based Network Operation Center for cloud-managed wi-fi devices (Web)
  • Cloud-managed wi-fi device provisioning app  (Android)

I was in charge of:

  • Designing a platform of apps and services that grew from 0 to 32 revenue customers, 15,000+ end-users, and expanded to 7 countries in under 1 year.
  • Understanding requirements from customers and stakeholders
  • Translating business requirements and platform constrains into user-oriented and user-friendly interfaces
  • Understanding the intricacies of the platform (easy set-up of cloud-based agent-managed ‘routers’ by both technicians and end-users)
  • Defining the workflows, screens, processes and interactions for the user interface
  • Coordinating with the development team to get designs into production pipeline
  • User-oriented and functionality QA control
  • Management of the app’s online access points (Google Play Store / Apple App Store)

Understanding and strategy

The first couple of weeks one visual designer and I interviewed all internal stakeholders and most of the developers to get a wide understanding of who we were targeting and what were we building.

Then we made a workshop with all the stakeholders and engineers to discover the user flow hypotheses and create profiles of the personae hypotheses we wanted to test on the product. We also created hypotheses for the customer journeys we’d create in order to understand where to maximise value and where our platform will offer possible pain points.

We also sat down with developers to understand in detail how the micro-services worked so we could have a good idea on how the experience worked on the backend and how that would affect the user experience. We created detailed flows of each process.

Designing the user flows

Next, I took a shot at the wireframes of the app, by first defining the user needs and goals and then defining a flow for each goal. I documented all the process on Confluence so developers had quick access to flows and screens and for the whole process to be easily updatable so we could move faster to the flows we would want to build.

Prototyping and testing

I created several prototypes for different states of the apps. I started with a simple Axure prototype that could be navigated in the desktop browser and also on a mobile. Later on I decided to move to Xcode to create a more realistic and native interaction.

Defining the experience

I worked with my design team to create both a native Android and iOS experience for each of the apps. We studied and tested both systems and adhered to platform standards such as interaction patterns and design guidelines like Material Design for Android. We created 5 apps both for tablets and smartphones in both Android and iOS.

Designs and visuals

Working side to side with the visual designer, we created a full set of designs for a total of:

• PocketWIFI (now blazeX, iOS/Android): an app for consumers to set up, configure and manage their CloudMondo wi-fi routers

• PocketNOQ (iOS/Android): a tablet app for ISPs to monitor and manage their wi-fi device networks

• PocketTEK (Android): an app for ISP field technicians to set up, provision and configure wi-fi devices

• WebNOQ (web): a webapp for ISPs to completely manage their wi-fi devices from the cloud.

We managed together the handover process to developers both in Santa Clara, USA, and Ljubljana, Slovenia. Within a cadence of two-week sprints, we aim to have interface releases in every sprint, and immediately afterwards we tested them with real-life scenarios, and when possible, with real-life prospect customers.

We managed to deliver all 6 apps within the 6-month deadline for a pilot programme abroad.