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The Company
For information about Cisco, please visit their website below.
The Project
The final goal of this project was to develop a standardized interactive library of terms and designs for Cisco employees to use. Labeling and design inconsistencies amongst Cisco products had become abundant and this library could help resolve those issues in a simple way with, hopefully, a minimum amount of resistance from employees. This project was sponsored by Cisco in conjunction with Stanford University.
The Team
This project was undertaken and completed by five Stanford University students - Lauren Wilson, Justin Ellis, Darla Browning, Sara Jaafar, and Jasmine Lee - during the Winter and Spring of 2013 in Stanford University's Design Methods course. Our project managers were Christine Nolan-Brady and Dimitri Arges. Our class project advisors were Professor Kurt Beiter and Teaching Assistant Vincent Jackson. All five members were equally involved in the ideation, fabrication, testing, and analysis phases of this project.
Product Analysis
Amongst many other methods used to determine the necessary aspects of the final product, we found that concept development, stakeholder input, and financial analysis were three very useful steps to solidifying our recommendations to Cisco at the end of our course.
Concept Development
Our initial development task involved creating three different concepts, "sketching" each of them, and comparing their pros and cons to decide on the best idea to move forward with. We decided to work with a simple solution, web-based solution, and custom software solution defined as follows:
- Simple Solution
- A single file containing all developed labels described only by a name
- Model: A Microsoft Excel file spreadsheet with the labels and their names on it
- Web-based Soluion
- A website containing all developed labels described by names and possible use cases with examples provided. Files must be downloaded individually. Search function would be included.
- Model: An html page created with Microsoft Excel
- Custom Software Soluion
- A software program containing all developed labels described by names and possible use cases with examples provided. Files could be downloaded individually or together. Search function would be included.
- Model: An old Cisco internal design tool called Kubrik (image not shown for confidentiality reasons)
Figure 1 - Concept Sketches
The Pugh Diagram is the tool we chose to compare the concepts to each other. A new design tool in development at Cisco is web-based, so we chose to use that as our datum. A plus (+) indicates that the concept would be better than the datum at the criteria being analyzed whereas a minus (-) would be worse than the datum. For example, we believe the Custom Software concept would allow for more collaboration between designers than the Web-based concept would and the Simple Solution concept would inhibit collaboration.
Figure 2 - Pugh Diagram
The Custom Software concept turned out to be our most attractive idea moving forward based on the criteria we judged each concept on. The biggest downside to this finding is that someone would have to design and create the software from scratch, which would be costly to Cisco.
Stakeholder Input
We were able to judge the importance of each product feature by gathering input from different Cisco employees who will be using the final product. These groups included the low-end routing and switching designers, manufacturers, management, and customer documentation to name a few. Within those groups, each feature was given a score of either one (1), three (3), or nine (9), which stood for low, moderate and high importance respectively. Therefore, the higher the sum of the scores, the more crucial the feature is.
Figure 3 - Stakeholder Matrix
Based on our data, content and version control are most important to the users of this product whereas ease of use is least important. This information was extremely helpful because we were able to report to our project manager that the platform upon which we presented the content was not as important to the users as the content itself and the way each item would be managed.
Financial Analysis
After determining the costs and cost savings associated with this project, performing project value, monte carlo, and sensitivity analyzes, and determining the impact of our project intervals on the net present value of the product, we have determined that the cost savings of instituting our proposed final product will always exceed the cost of the product. This savings is composed primarily of the money saved by having a single product configuration as opposed to multiple product configurations, which cuts product creation costs by roughly 50% or more.
Figure 4 - Project Value Analysis
The Final Product
Our recommendation for a final product was to modify a tool currently in development at Cisco called Collaboration Design. Collaborations Design is a web-based tool that displays the content with a name, description of use, and examples. It is searchable and allows users to communicated with each other to clarify the proper uses of each item. Since this tool is already in development for the software engineers in Cisco, an additional section can easily be added to include the content needed by other business units (BUs), which keeps both monetary costs and development time down.
Figure 5 - Collaboration Design Search Display Page
Figure 6 - Collaboration Design Content Display Page
Of course, since this tool has not been designed specifically for this project, it does not meet all of the necessary function items identified by our stakeholders. The functions that are either missing or need to be improved on are as follows.
- Content Control
- Access to the labels and descriptions needs to be limited to authorized users only
- Content must only be added/deleted/modified by a small number of authorized personnel.
- Version Control
- The system needs to maintain a version history of each label
- Versioning numbering/lettering must be included, and must conform to a constant standard.
- Labels must be in Adobe Illustrator format to match Cisco's current design process
- Labels are well described
- Label descriptions must contain all versions of the text that the new label is to replace or appear beside
- Label descriptions must contain keywords relating to their function and use so that they can be found via search
- Label descriptions need to include all applicable/relevant acronyms so that they can be found via search
- Label descriptions and subcategories must be consistent
Moving Forward
As this project continues until its launch at the end of August 2013, there are a few changes that must be made if this product is to be successful. First, the necessary changes to Collaboration Design listed above must be instituted in order for all of the business units to easily adopt the change from the current product design process to this standardized process. Second, the low-end routing and low-end switching sections of Collaboration Design must be created. Third, more business units should be considered stakeholders - since this transition will most likely affect more Cisco employees than we have currently anticipated - and gain the approval from all of the stakeholders for the developed labels. Finally, training and troubleshooting must occur immediately when this product is launched. Hopefully with this product and our recommendations, Cisco will be able to effectively transition their design process.
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