Cisco IoT Center

Cisco IoT Center serves operations teams managing thousands of connected devices across manufacturing environments — from sensors on production lines to network switches controlling factory operations.

The platform had grown organically over several releases, adding device monitoring, job scheduling, and network management capabilities. But the UX hadn't evolved with the same coherence — each feature felt like a separate product bolted onto the same shell.

• Device inventory was difficult to filter and navigate at scale
• Alert fatigue from undifferentiated notification priorities
• Dashboard configurations couldn't be shared across teams
• Network management required switching between multiple views for a single task

Rather than relying solely on analytics and support tickets, we conducted in-person research at two of IoT Center's largest customer sites — visiting factory floors, shadowing operations teams, and observing how they actually used the platform in high-pressure environments.

The existing platform surfaced an overwhelming volume of data without helping users identify what required immediate action. Operations teams were drowning in notifications, struggling with rigid filtering, and losing time switching between disconnected views.

The core issue wasn't missing features. It was missing hierarchy — the platform treated a minor sensor fluctuation the same as a production-line failure. We needed to redesign the information architecture to surface what matters most.

We translated our research findings into design principles that would guide every decision: prioritize actionability over completeness, reduce cognitive load through progressive disclosure, and create clear visual hierarchies for device states.

Through collaborative workshops with engineering and product, we explored multiple directions for reorganizing the platform's core workflows around user intent rather than system architecture.

Device inventory was the most-used feature but also the most frustrating. We redesigned it from the ground up with dynamic filtering, saved views, and a device detail experience that gives operators everything they need without leaving the page.

The old filtering system offered a fixed set of dropdowns that couldn't be combined or saved. Teams managing hundreds of devices had no way to create persistent views for their specific monitoring needs.

We designed a composable filter system where operators can stack conditions, save configurations as named views, and share them with teammates — turning ad-hoc searches into reusable workflows.

Different teams needed different views of the same data. Network engineers wanted port utilization at a glance. Floor supervisors wanted device health roll-ups by production line. IT managers wanted incident trends over time.

We redesigned the dashboard experience with configurable dashlets that teams can add, arrange, and customize to match their operational focus — replacing the one-size-fits-all dashboard with purpose-built views.

Network management previously required operators to navigate between four separate views to complete a single troubleshooting workflow. We consolidated these into a unified network management dashboard with contextual drill-downs.

Our research revealed that 73% of alerts were being dismissed without investigation. The notification system treated every event equally — a minor sensor fluctuation looked identical to a critical production-line failure.

We redesigned the notification system with tiered severity levels, contextual grouping, and direct links to relevant device detail views — reducing the noise while ensuring critical alerts surface immediately.

Job management — scheduling firmware updates, configuration pushes, and diagnostic runs across device groups — was one of the platform's most complex workflows. We simplified it with a clearer job creation flow, real-time progress tracking, and contextual error handling.