Design at Cisco

I found this article interesting. It describes how Cisco, a classic engineering-focussed network equipment company, is now paying attention to customer experience.

He [Ratzlaff] and his dozen-or-so staffers have created a blueprint for how Cisco's products should work together for customers. With the support of CEO John Chambers and other top brass, they are trying to impose it on the San Jose company.

Their degree of success will help determine whether Cisco can reach beyond the business of selling routers and other basic networking gear, an area it dominates, into faster-growing markets for products that make use of those networks. "Cisco is respected for their technology and for their financial success, but nobody really knows what they do," says Hartmut Esslinger, founder of consultancy frog design.

I think that this is a great example of what should be an i-School like project ... what kinds of information do network managers need, what kind of interfaces do the job, etc.