Designing a Dashboard for a CIO
Client
Cloud-based Networks Management Solution
Role
Lead User Experience Designer
Platforms
Desktop
About the Client
A newly launched startup building the industry’s first cloud-native enterprise mobile networking solution. Their product combines 5G wireless technology with AI-driven infrastructure management, helping enterprises monitor performance, track devices, and configure network rules across locations. With rapid customer growth post-stealth, they needed to significantly improve the dashboard experience before scaling new features.
Problem & Context
The early product had a single dashboard with multiple widgets that served all users. However, this approach did not scale well for diverse stakeholders such as CIOs, IT Admins, and Engineers.
CIOs needed high-level insights and growth metrics
IT Admins needed operational and troubleshooting data
To address this, the first step was to design separate dashboards for CIOs and IT Admins.
Stakeholders & Team
Chief Technology Officer,
Engineering Lead,
2 Engineers,
1 Visual Designer and
1 Product Designer (Me)
Initial Brief and Requirements
My first step was to understand the primary user role — the CIO, for whom the dashboard was being designed. I created a persona to capture their goals, responsibilities, and decision-making needs. Unlike IT admins or engineers, the CIO required strategic, high-level visibility into the organization’s network rather than detailed troubleshooting data.
To refine the requirements, I collaborated closely with the client team to identify which metrics were most relevant to a CIO and why. This helped me prioritize data that would provide real value to leadership, rather than overwhelming them with operational noise.
One key insight was the importance of location-based context. The CIO needed to:
View the network infrastructure on a map, to visually grasp scale and distribution.
Drill down by location and time range to see how devices were using network resources.
Identify patterns of usage that could inform decisions about expanding internet services where needed.
Information Architecture
Once the requirements were gathered, I began exploring different layouts for how the map, metrics, and insights could be presented within the dashboard. Early wireframes experimented with combining strategic overviews for the CIO alongside more detailed technical metrics.
Through several feedback cycles with stakeholders, it became clear that the CIO’s needs were more high-level than initially anticipated. Detailed troubleshooting data and granular analytics were unnecessary at this level and better suited for the IT Administrator role. This helped refine the information architecture by focusing the CIO’s dashboard on clarity, simplicity, and strategic visibility.
The final set of core components included:
Date & Time Range Selector to analyze trends over specific periods.
Location Selector to switch between different sites or regions.
High-level KPIs such as total connected devices, coverage area, utilization, and peak connections.
Map View to provide a visual representation of the network footprint.
Devices Connected Panel to give a quick sense of activity at the selected location.
This structure ensured the dashboard balanced strategic oversight with contextual awareness, while reserving more technical data for the appropriate user roles.
Wireframing
Final Output
Some selected screens from the final output
Outcomes & Impact
The dashboard, originally designed for the CIO persona, provided a clear, high-level view of the client’s network infrastructure and its growth over time. Its simplicity, adaptability, and strategic value led to it being adopted beyond its initial audience and eventually re-purposed as the main dashboard and landing page for the entire product.
Key Outcomes:
Enabled CIOs and senior stakeholders to visualize network coverage and usage trends at a glance.
Made it easy for leadership to track growth metrics by location and time range, supporting strategic decision-making.
The design’s clarity and broad relevance allowed it to scale across multiple user groups, not just CIOs.
Ultimately, the dashboard was elevated to the core entry point of the product experience, becoming the foundation for Cloud Solution’s primary interface.
Future Scope & Learnings
The dashboard has the potential to evolve into a multi-lens experience, where different user roles can view the network infrastructure through contexts most relevant to them — for example, CIOs focusing on growth and coverage, while IT Admins might track operational efficiency. This flexibility would make the product more inclusive and valuable across stakeholder groups.
Learnings:
Designing for leadership roles like the CIO taught me the importance of prioritizing clarity over detail — less is often more at the decision-making level.
Creating a dashboard that later scaled beyond its intended persona reinforced the value of designing with adaptability and scalability in mind.
Working in a highly technical domain highlighted the need to collaborate closely with subject-matter experts to translate complex metrics into meaningful insights for different users.
