A product design partnership spanning over a decade with an Illinois-based client — from simplifying dense network-monitoring dashboards to designing a brand-new support experience from scratch.
Since 2015, a leading provider of wireless networking infrastructure based out of Illinois has relied on Outwitly’s UX expertise for designing scalable wireless service management products and features. Our work spanned two key initiatives:
Their passionate PO sought Outwitly’s help both in creating a recognizable, scalable design system for further product development, and optimizing IT efficiency to a level that could unlock market expansion.
This client knew their troubleshooting flows needed to be more widely accessible and scalable for customers with drastically varying levels of technical knowledge on their teams — from network operators monitoring thousands of devices and parsing dense metrics, to frontline support agents fielding basic requests.
Across that range, they were facing several distinct challenges:
Fragmented tools obscuring time-sensitive network issues. Operators managing large, multi-node wireless deployments across cities and campuses needed a clearer and faster way to visualize their networks and diagnose problems, rather than piecing information together from scattered technical data and multiple separate diagnostic tools.
A high barrier to troubleshooting for tier-1 support. The company recognized the need for more accessible support flows so that tier 1 IT teams with lower technical savvy could help triage a wider set of issues.They wanted to open up automated workflows that could drastically reduce the volume of escalations sent to expensive specialists.
A “wall of sameness” for both users and designers to unpack. As the product portfolio expanded, dashboards across different tools began to look nearly identical to one another — presenting added adoption difficulty, efficiency problems for users searching for specific data, and potential comprehension challenges for any designers coming from the outside.
No established design system, and no shared language for defining design problems. With no internal design team, no user research data, and high level of workflow complexity, the company needed help from UX consultants who could quickly understand the technical concepts involved in cloud networking, gather requirements, and align stakeholders and engineers on which pain points to prioritize.
Designing software in highly technical, engineering-led environments requires bringing clarity to dense data, and collaborating smoothly with often-overloaded developers to keep builds moving forward.
This networking solutions client engaged Outwitly for our proven track record untangling processes in other complex domains like government and enterprise finance.
They relied on our team to:
Accelerate alignment between engineering and leadership. Working closely with engineering leads, our team was able to absorb intricate cloud networking logic without bogging down developer timelines, and so that the project team could quickly get to work in making the network monitoring experience for their legacy platform more intuitive, and mapping out priority workflows for the rest of the product roadmap.
Turn dense network telemetry into clear visual signals. The Outwitly ux solutions team helped this client reduce visual noise across the product line by replacing heavy telemetry lists with map-based health indicators—making system status and diagnostic metrics obvious at a glance.
Build scalable foundations for a unified brand and product experience. By establishing a modular Figma design system alongside core information architecture standards, we gave cross-functional teams a single source of truth to enforce visual consistency, modernize existing products, and ship new features seamlessly across the cloud networking suite.
Streamline executive decision-making and roadmap scoping. Rather than handing over overwhelming design wishlists to internal stakeholders to approve, we introduced lightweight “T-shirt sizing” (XS–XL) to map design debt directly against engineering effort — resulting in an easily readable framework for teams to balance trade-offs, and leaders to greenlight priority fixes.
With Outwitly’s strategic design support, this client was equipped with the tools, design standards, and frameworks needed to transform their complex network management software into an intuitive, highly competitive product portfolio.
This work set the client up to:
Lower operational overhead across diagnostic workflows. Optimizing the network node map set teams up to streamline monitoring and reduce time searching for connectivity issues — increasing operational efficiency and enhancing the overall value of the client’s offerings.
Scale support capacity and cost more efficiently. Designing intuitive diagnostic workflows and guided troubleshooting workflows would allow frontline support agents to handle more complex issues, easing ticket burden on higher-cost senior engineering teams.
Strengthen brand recognition and user trust. Deploying a central design system set the organization up to establish a unified, polished and memorable visual identity to inspire customer loyalty across legacy offerings as well as conversion to net-new products or add-ons.
Translate executive vision into market momentum. Establishing structured effort estimation frameworks for the product roadmap gave leadership the visibility needed to set predictable release schedules, optimize engineering bandwidth, and release new features into the market at a competitive pace.
By pairing deep technical capability, scalable design methodology, and a keen ability to “speak stakeholder,” Outwitly’s team helped empower this leading solutions provider to build “better” faster, maintain alignment on design and development priorities, and deliver exceptional user experiences poised to drive long-term business value.
We’re ready when you are.