Designing a Dashboard for an IT Admin
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
To define the scope of the IT Administrator Dashboard, I began by creating a persona to represent the primary users — on-site engineers, IT and network administrators, and other technical staff responsible for maintaining network infrastructure at client locations. Unlike CIOs, these users needed detailed, operational data to troubleshoot issues and ensure the network was running smoothly.
Through discussions with stakeholders, I mapped out the information and workflows these users would require, focusing on how they diagnose problems, monitor device health, and respond to incidents.
Since there were no direct competitors offering a similar solution, I conducted a comparative analysis of products in adjacent domains (infrastructure monitoring tools, network management platforms, etc.) to understand common interaction patterns and identify opportunities to improve upon them.
Key Requirements Identified:
A timeline-based view at the top of the screen, showing events in chronological context.
Critical network events highlighted within the timeline to prioritize issues needing attention.
The ability to browse devices across the network infrastructure and quickly switch between them.
A device detail view, allowing administrators to check status, metrics, and drill deeper into diagnostics as required.
Information Architecture
With the key requirements defined, I translated them into a structured information architecture for the IT Admin dashboard. The goal was to ensure that administrators could move seamlessly from a high-level overview of events to more granular device details when needed.
I collaborated closely with the engineering team to:
Map out which metrics and views were most critical for troubleshooting.
Define the hierarchy of information — from timeline-based network events to device-specific diagnostics.
Identify decision points where an admin would need to drill deeper, ensuring that detailed data only appeared when contextually relevant.
This process resulted in an IA that balanced clarity with depth, giving IT Admins quick situational awareness while supporting detailed investigation when issues arose.
Wireframing
I explored a few low-fidelity layouts for the IT Admin Dashboard which had the timeline at the top of it, along with a time range selector and a panel on the right to view details for the selected device.
For the high level view of the network infrastructure we explored options to show the network connections in a list format, tree map and other options.
Final Output
Here's some of the components and select screens from the IT Admin Dashboard
Outcomes & Impact
The introduction of the Network Map transformed the IT Admin dashboard into a more intuitive and actionable tool. By visualizing the infrastructure as nodes across a location, admins could instantly see the status of each device in the context of network events displayed on the timeline. This reduced cognitive load and made troubleshooting faster and more systematic.
A details panel on the right complemented the map, surfacing relevant metrics and charts that supported quick assessments. When deeper investigation was required, admins could easily drill down into a device’s full diagnostic view.
Key Outcomes:
Simplified infrastructure visibility through the Network Map, making device relationships and statuses easier to understand.
Highlighted time-based events and KPIs directly in context, giving admins actionable insights without switching screens.
Reduced the time required to identify and isolate affected devices, resulting in faster troubleshooting and incident resolution.
Created a scalable framework that could support future automation features, such as predictive alerts and auto-recommended actions.
Future Scope & Learnings
Over the course of the engagement with the client, the IT Admin dashboard went through a number of incremental updates which greatly increased its value. Apart from solving for edge cases and other issues, we also improved the visuals of the network map and added some filters to make events a little less overwhelming to consume and render.
