Network Path Analyzer
I led UX design for Network Path Analyzer, giving customers a visual way to simulate and troubleshoot network paths in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) before sending live traffic, reducing dependency on support for diagnostics.
My role
Lead UX designer (creation of new service and future feature releases)
Cross functional team
UI Engineers, API Engineers, Product Managers, Technical Content Writers, Solutions Architects
Project timeline
3 months (design phase for initial release)
The problem
Oracle enterprise customers manage complex hybrid networks that span on-premises systems, OCI, and other public clouds. Setting up these connections requires configuring many components, such as gateways, route tables, VPN tunnels, and security groups, which often leads to misconfigurations or missed steps. When issues occur, customers lack effective self-service tools to diagnose and fix problems, resulting in heavy reliance on support.
Analysis of a 13-week period showed that 13% of support tickets were directly caused by OCI networking misconfigurations, and another 20% involved a mix of OCI misconfigurations and external network issues. Common errors included incorrect route entries, incomplete configurations, and overly restrictive security rules. These patterns highlighted the need for better diagnostic capabilities to reduce support dependency and accelerate troubleshooting.
My impact
I designed a net new OCI service that simulates network traffic paths to help customers quickly diagnose misconfigurations, validate connectivity intent, and verify setups before sending real traffic. By simplifying a highly technical process into clear workflows and visualizations, I empowered users to troubleshoot issues independently, reduce support reliance, and deploy with greater confidence.
The process
Project Kickoff
Expert interview
Project planning
Competitive Analysis
Audit other cloud providers
Storyboarding
Document all user workflows
Design
High fidelity mocks
Clickable prototypes
Review and iteration with stakeholders
User Research
Customer interviews
Developer Handoff & Iteration
UX review board approval
Developer support
Design new features and UX improvements
Phase 1: Discovery
Kickoff and SME interviews
I kicked off by interviewing subject-matter experts to understand the project, asking questions to identify the users, what tasks they need to perform, and what our constraints are. Early on, questions centered on how best to visually represent nodes, hops, and resource relationships. I captured all affected workflows and screens, and aligned on timeline expectations.
Competitive and inspiration audit
To see how others solved similar challenges, I audited offerings from major cloud platforms (Azure, AWS, Google Cloud) and infrastructure monitoring tools like SolarWinds. I specifically looked for visual approaches to node relationships, representations of key metrics, and how to manage scale of large topologies. These insights surfaced patterns like expandable areas or popups to show more information that we could adapt, and pitfalls to avoid like overly cluttered displays.
Storyboarding
I sketched storyboards covering the core user journeys — creating a new path test, editing, interpreting results, handling incomplete paths, and deletion. These storyboards helped me visualize how users move through tasks and where decision points occur. After internal review, I presented them to stakeholders to align on flow logic and surface necessary edge cases before diving into mocks.
Phase 2: Ideate and design
High fidelity mock-ups
With flows and edge cases clear, I sketched layout alternatives for the path visualization. However, early concepts exposed specific limitations: the designs struggled to scale and lacked the information users needed to troubleshoot effectively.
Design system integration and visual refinement
Once a direction emerged, I anchored designs in our existing Oracle networking design system for consistency. I refined visual elements like arrows, node shapes, and hierarchy indicators to ensure clarity while preserving brand language. I built interactions like clickable arrows to expose rule-detail tables to encourage exploration without overwhelming the interface.
Progressive disclosure and detail reveal
To manage complexity in large networks, I used progressive disclosure (hiding less relevant sub-details until needed) keeping the diagram information table lightweight, yet allowed deep dives on demand. This design choice addressed a core tension: giving users detailed troubleshooting information without cluttering the visual.
Phase 3: Validate and iterate
Customer interviews
I built clickable prototypes mapping back to realistic use cases (reachable and unreachable path tests). In interviews, I used a targeted script to uncover mental model gaps, wording confusion, or visualization misinterpretation with questions like “What information do you want to see at first glance on the diagram or in the table?” and “Given the information we have shown in the unreachable path, how would you go about fixing the problem?”. Feedback surfaced changes like adding a clarifying description above the path visualization area, labeling the source and destination resources, and marking failure points with clear “X”s.
Developer handoff
Once design was stable, I prepared full walkthroughs for engineers, conducted a leadership demo, and gathered UX board approval. During handoff, I joined recurring dev check-ins to clarify design intent, respond to implementation questions, and adjust for technical constraints without compromising usability.
Post-launch iteration and feature enhancements
Design didn’t end at initial launch. I continued to improve the service through feature enhancements like cross service linking, helping users onboard to the service more easily though a prerequisites workflow, and supporting larger scale path tests to support bigger OCI customers.
Results
The release of Network Path Analyzer introduced a powerful new way for OCI customers to diagnose and validate their network configurations without sending live traffic. Through an intuitive, simulation-based interface, users can visualize network paths, identify misconfigurations, and verify connectivity intent with confidence. By enabling customers to troubleshoot network issues independently, the tool reduces reliance on support teams and accelerates resolution times, creating a more efficient and self-service troubleshooting experience.