Unifying Policy at Cisco Umbrella

Cisco Umbrella’s policy model had become fragmented, siloed, and overly technical—creating usability issues, inconsistent security outcomes, and frequent customer complaints. As a Senior Product Designer, I led the multi-year initiative to unify this experience into a single, cohesive dashboard for managing enterprise security policies across security, access, and data protection.

My Role

As a Principal Product Designer, I noticed that no one “owned” the overall policy experience. I stepped up to connect the dots and push for a more unified experience. My role included:

• Partnering and leading with customer research, including building a 100+ member advisory group and conducting interviews, card sorts and surveys.

• Facilitating workshops with customers, sales, support, and customer success to understand pain points from every angle.

• Sketching, prototyping, and testing new models for how policies could be created and managed.

• Partnering with engineers and product managers to ensure designs were both feasible and scalable.

• Presenting the vision to senior executives and securing buy-in, funding, and staffing for a formal scalable design program.

  
  

Collaborative sketching sessions aligned design, product, and engineering around shared concepts.

Backend flow diagrams helped engineers, PMs, and designers align on how policies should scale.

Prototyping multiple approaches and gathering real customer feedback early to shape the best path forward. 👉 Check out an early prototype.

The Solution

We shifted from a scattered, tool-by-tool setup to a centralized, outcome-focused experience. Key improvements included:

• One place to manage security — instead of jumping across different tools, admins could see everything in a single view.

• Clear structure — established design patterns, reflecting how customers actually thought about security.

• Simpler creation flow — a guided onboarding experience that reduced errors and cut down on duplicated work.

• Transparency built-in — Redefined the product experience and information architecture so our Users didn’t have to dig for them.

Outcomes & Impact

• Improved customer satisfaction — Experience clarity and ease of use drove measurable increases in Customer Satisfaction KPIs.

• Boosted renewals & retention — A simpler, unified experience reduced churn and strengthened long-term customer ARR.

• Team alignment — The project secured executive buy-in, reshaped team structures, and unlocked multi-year investment for Design.

• Scalable foundation for growth — Established a model that could flexibly keep pace with a fast-growing $800M business.

Awards

• 2023 Emotional Footprint Champion from SoftwareReviews: Also based on user reviews, this award focused on customer satisfaction and user sentiment.

• Frost & Sullivan Technology Leadership Award: This honor recognized the product for integrating multiple solutions into a single, scalable cloud service. 

Full Case Study Available Upon Request

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