Ethernet UI for Force 10 Traverse
Posted on | October 9, 2009 | No Comments
I was responsible for creating the documentation for the new Ethernet product for Turin Networks (now Force10).
I would interview the designers and engineers about the technology and what services a customer could use the technology for. I would create an outline—and go. I would ALWAYS, always use the user interface to make sure that what I was writing was actually possible and everything made sense.
About four weeks into researching Ethernet and understanding what the new version would be able to do, I realized that I would need more exposure to the design team. I was in Sonoma County. They were in Boston. I arranged to spend a week in Boston.
Once there, and after a few hours with Ev Tate looking at her white board explanations and diagrams about how things should work, we realized that the UI could be simplified into types of services with business rules to expose the relevant parameters for each service type. On top of that, traffic management could also be managed into more logical groupings based on task analysis.
I spent the rest of the week redesigning screens in Visio. I’d created mock-ups of what the UI could look like. We worked together to create an improved customer experience with our product. The Ethernet design team in Boston were relieved that I’d made such an effort to explain their efforts. They approved the proposed redesigns.
I got back to Petaluma and arranged multiple reviews with customer support, product line management, and the UI design team. It took almost eight months to gather and incorporate everybody’s comments and feedback. I received company-wide recognition (and congratulations from our CEO Henry Wasik) for my efforts to simplify the complex Ethernet technology for the customer.
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