SEE WORK BELOW ↓ SEE WORK BELOW ↓SEE WORK BELOW ↓SEE WORK BELOW ↓SEE WORK BELOW ↓SEE WORK BELOW ↓SEE WORK BELOW ↓SEE WORK BELOW ↓SEE WORK BELOW ↓SEE WORK BELOW ↓SEE WORK BELOW ↓SEE WORK BELOW ↓
How might we help employees find solutions to their problems through HelpZone, quickly and on their own?
Please look on your desktop to see this case study :)
Team: Moon Sun (Lead Product Designer) | Liz Alexander (Content Designer) | Sarah Engleman (UX Researcher Lead) | , Hyong Woo Hahm (UX Researcher) | Stan Cole (Engineering Lead/Manager) | Arlene Ccheng (PM)
The problem
Users found self help in HelpZone difficult to navigate and they were looking for live agents to quickly take care of their problem so they can continue their work.
Based on our surveys, users wanted support channels to be highly visible on the homepage. However business needs were the opposite. They were cutting 2/3's of their live agent staff by 2/3's. We interviewed 20 users to understand why they wanted highly visible support channels instead of looking for a solution on HelpZone.
Target users: Employees of Cisco
Project type
product design & strategy
YEAR
2024-2025
MY ROLE
lead designer
Company
cisco
Impact
in self-resolution user confidence
(pre-launch was 42% which is 28pt increase)
lift in tile adoption compared to the quarter prior.
improvement in case tracking efficiency, cutting the time agents spent rerouting misplaced cases
of employees now attempt self-help before contacting an agent, up from just 36%. A 49-point shift that proved trust in the platform was earned
My role
I led the full experience redesign across the homepage, help topics page, and search results page and integrated AI features throughout the flows.
Solution
I led the full experience redesign across the homepage, help topics page, and search results page and integrated AI features throughout the flows.
Want to dig deeper?
Context
HelpZone is Cisco's internal employee support platform, home to a knowledge base spanning IT and People & Culture (HR) resources, with options to open cases or reach live support. Despite its breadth, more than 75% of employees bypassed it entirely, turning to colleagues or direct support channels instead. The platform had a trust problem - and with it, a self-service problem
Problem
Entry-point feedback surfaced a recurring theme across users: the pathways to live support and case submission were too hard to find. Employees weren't just struggling with self-service, they couldn't reach human support either, leaving them with nowhere to turn.
Working with UX Research, I ran a 20-user study to pinpoint why support channels felt invisible. We asked participants to open a case, and 16 out of 20 didn't scroll far enough to even find it. The channels weren't missing. They were just out of sight.
The fix seemed obvious: surface support channels above the fold. But stakeholders pushed back. Live agent support was being cut by two-thirds, and the business couldn't absorb a spike in opened cases or calls — they needed those channels hidden, not highlighted.
Initial idea of surfacing the support channels above the fold
I partnered with research to see what users were saying
Initiating the Process
To balance user needs with business constraints, we crafted 'How Might We' statements to keep our exploration grounded and focused.
How can we help users find their solution efficiently while encouraging self-help?
How do we get users to self-help before looking for a live agent?
How do we help users get to where they need.
Constraints
Design Thinking
At this time, Cisco's internal AI tool called Circuit was introduced as a internal tool for employees to use in the workforce. I hosted a workshop with my team to understand how we could possibly leverage this AI tool to encourage users to do self help.
One of the proposals was using AI to show options in the typeahead as well as as summarizing articles. This rang a lightbulb. After that, I used AI to generate more ideas on where we could possible incorporate AI into HelpZone.
Embedded CircuIT in the typeahead to show suggestions to users while they are typing
Most support platforms treat search as a starting point, here are ten articles, good luck. CircuIT flips that. It reads the user's query, generates a summarized solution, and pairs it with the most relevant articles. The goal: resolve the issue right there in the search results, before the user ever needs to open an article or contact an agent.
Data-Informed Design
Business requirements kept support channels off the homepage - but users made it clear they wanted a way to reach a live agent there. So we looked at the data: fewer than 1% of users clicked the homepage's "Featured Articles" section, since the content wasn't personalized. Yet IT operations still required it, taking up real estate that could serve a better purpose.
I proposed pulling a component from Bridge, one of our other employee platforms: the Spotlight modal. Reusing components was always an easy yes internally, less to build, and it kept our employee platforms consistent. The idea was to use the modal for "Featured articles," with a discreet "contact support" link pointing to an article with phone numbers. I also worked with engineering on personalizing the articles themselves, and we landed on surfacing them based on the user's location.
So although the tradeoff was that we could not surface the support channels like the way user wanted, they were still able to access some kind of live support if it was really needed.
We used PowerBI behavioral data to determine which categories employees were searching for most. That data directly informed which tiles appeared on the homepage and in what order, the most-used categories were surfaced first, so employees could find what they needed without scrolling or guessing.
Each category featured a curated list of the most reliable, up-to-date resources maintained by the organization team. PowerBI also revealed that employees overwhelmingly used the subcategory filter over other filter options, so instead of presenting a long, flat list of articles, we organized the curated content into subcategory groups, making it scannable and easier to navigate.
Building trust with users while meeting business needs
Building trust with users while meeting business needs
We couldn't put support channels on the homepage — but we could make them reliably present everywhere a user goes after that. By surfacing live agent access the moment self-help begins, we solved both sides: the business kept homepage escalation low, and users always knew help was within reach.
We couldn't put support channels on the homepage — but we could make them reliably present everywhere a user goes after that. By surfacing live agent access the moment self-help begins, we solved both sides: the business kept homepage escalation low, and users always knew help was within reach.
Smart Routing, Seamless Experience
Smart Routing, Seamless Experience
The organizational split between IT and P&C was a backend reality, not something users should have to navigate. We solved this by using page context to determine which support channels appeared. An employee browsing IT content only sees IT support options. An employee on a P&C page only sees P&C options. The experience feels unified, but every case lands with the right team
The organizational split between IT and P&C was a backend reality, not something users should have to navigate. We solved this by using page context to determine which support channels appeared. An employee browsing IT content only sees IT support options. An employee on a P&C page only sees P&C options. The experience feels unified, but every case lands with the right team
Final thoughts and reflection
The biggest lesson: design for where AI falls short, not just where it succeeds. It's tempting to assume an AI summary and suggested articles will resolve most issues. Treating "doesn't find what they need" as an expected outcome, not an edge case, is what made the support escalation work.
The homepage tradeoff taught me something too. Business said no support channels on the homepage. Users wanted exactly that. Instead of treating it as a dead end, I looked at what was already there and not earning its place. Featured articles had under 1% click-through. Swapping it for a path to live support solved both problems without breaking the constraint.
Next time, I'd pull usage data on homepage real estate earlier, before a constraint forces the question.