Cisco Cloud Marketplace

Cisco Cloud Services (CCS) is a highly scalable and standardized cloud platform that provides customers with on-demand virtual infrastructure, storage, compute, and network resources. Included with CCS is the Cisco Cloud Marketplace, an online store where visitors can buy or sell various network applications and virtual resources.

As the sole designer for the Marketplace, I designed the very first mockups and prototypes all the way through to our initial release by using the sophisticated tools within Axure. This the first product to embrace the new Cisco design language, Atlantic. The decisions made in this project carried through to Cisco’s corporate branding guidelines.

The challenges of designing an online storefront are magnified when that store sells complicated cloud services products. Cloud users are technologically savvy with specific needs; cloud services do not have just one assigned price; many of the products are usually billed by the hour. In order to understand the cloud marketplace arena, I met with the product owner several times to gather background information, product vision, and demos of competing services.

I started researching some of the most popular cloud platforms like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform etc. Beyond understanding these specialized services, I researched several of the successful players in the consumer shopping space to understand some of the best design practices when buying online.

The two examples below show early and mature mockups side by side to demonstrate the evolution of the product.

Early into the process, and with our initial prototype in hand, we recruited potential users to user test our concept. While recording their screen and audio, we asked them to think aloud throughout the tests. The feedback was invaluable and helped us catch some use cases where we could provide additional support.

Beyond the incorporation of user feedback, we wanted the Marketplace to embrace the newest design trends (this was 2015), specifically, turning the shopping experience into a seamless one-page stop along with the copious use of spacing and cleaner fonts.

A demonstration of the one-page view can be seen below when a user clicks on a product thumbnail directly from the “Featured Products” section. The complete product details open up directly below the thumbnail.

We made an effort to avoid a typical transactional experience by adding engaging and intuitive design elements.

Some examples of our efforts can be seen in the 3 images below:

1. We present the breakdown of user reviews using a circle with different sized wedges.
2. The breakdown of multiple costs associated with one service is represented by a circle with different colored arcs.
3. The configuration page is laid out and spaced in an easy-to-understand and easy-to-configure design.

The Cisco Cloud Services platform, along with its Marketplace, launched in late-2015. Communication with the many people involved was key to ensure its successful release.

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