Case Study: Avigilon Cloud
Advanced System Health

Problem:
The Stakes of System Downtime

Many of our enterprise customers rely on hundreds—or even thousands—of IP-connected security cameras across campuses, warehouses, or stores. When one goes offline, it creates real operational risk. But at the time:

  • Users lacked visibility into system health beyond basic “online/offline” status

  • Root cause analysis required contacting support or manually combing through logs

  • There was no central dashboard surfacing critical issues in a way that IT and security teams could both understand

We suspected this was more than just a UI gap—it was a workload, workflow, and ownership challenge.

Phase 1: Foundational Research

My team conducted extensive foundational research to understand system health challenges across large, multi-site security deployments.

We used:

  • Contextual interviews with IT managers, system admins, and security directors in verticals like higher education, logistics, and enterprise retail

  • Job shadowing with support engineers handling frequent tickets

  • Support case analysis to identify the most common and costly system failures

  • Journey mapping of diagnostic workflows and escalation paths

Phase 2: Post-Launch Validation Research

Unlike some projects that stop at delivery, we made research part of the feedback loop. After beta rollout, we conducted:

  • Usability testing with 8 enterprise accounts (Implemented Microsoft Clarity for usage analytics and heat-mapping)

  • Follow-up interviews with power users

  • Comparative task analysis: Old vs. new troubleshooting time

  • Heuristic reviews of issue cards and alert terminology

Iterative Refinement

Built a systematic approach for ongoing iteration as the platform matured, including placeholder designs for future features like privilege management, reporting, and licensing modules.

Customer Validation

  • Our hypotheses held: users resolved issues 40% faster on average

  • Customers appreciated having recommendations embedded directly in the UI

  • IT users requested deeper network telemetry integration, which informed our next roadmap sprint

  • We introduced small but impactful language changes—e.g., “Device sync paused” → “Cloud sync delayed—no footage loss”—to reduce user anxiety

Outcomes & Impact

  • 30% reduction in support tickets for health-related incidents

  • 40% faster resolution times reported by key enterprise clients

  • Used research insights to inform roadmap, not just polish the UI

  • Featured in EPF demos as a critical advancement in operational confidence

UX Execution

We designed a scalable, intuitive health dashboard with:

  • Tiered severity queues and clear visual indicators

  • Dynamic issue cards with plain-language explanations, metadata, and suggestions

  • Timeline heatmaps showing recurring outages or sync failures

  • Role-specific views: Security-focused summaries and IT-deep diagnostics

  • Interactive camera previews + map overlays to give visual context fast

Early Insights:

  • Most system health issues were detected too late, often after footage was lost or systems failed

  • IT and security teams had fragmented visibility and different mental models of “health”

  • Customers wanted early signals, simplified root cause info, and step-by-step resolution guidance without having to escalate to support

This foundational research gave us strong initial hypotheses—but we knew we'd need to validate them post-launch to ensure we were solving the right problems at scale.

“As long as you have the permissions to see like system health information, knowing that something needs to be addressed is important, ‘cause that creates revenue, it also creates happy partners, happy customers, end users, because things are taken care of.”
— Channel Partner
“System health is going to be probably one of the most important things... Action now jumps to the top for me, devices and licensing, and I’m thinking strictly from an enterprise management standpoint.”
— Large Enterprise Customer

Leadership & Learnings

  • Brought design, product, and support together in co-creation workshops

  • Elevated research from “early-stage input” to a continuous strategy tool

  • Drove accessibility and clarity across all views (high-contrast design, assistive labels, etc.)

  • Created a framework for closing the research loop—a practice now replicated across Avigilon Cloud projects

“From an IT standpoint, what we’re used to is having all the different high-level depictions of sites and overall systems health within that first page of the product. That’s something that we’re accustomed to.”
— Large Enterprise Customer

What’s Next

  • Extending system health to include:

    • AI analytics readiness

    • Storage utilization forecasting

    • Mobile alerts for on-site integrators

  • Creating integrator dashboards for multi-site fleet health

  • Building auto-resolve logic using machine learning from recurring issue patterns

Overview

As Director of UX at Motorola Solutions, I led the end-to-end design strategy for Advanced System Health, a key capability within the Avigilon Cloud platform. This initiative aimed to transform how enterprise customers monitor, maintain, and proactively manage large-scale video security systems—reducing downtime, increasing situational awareness, and lowering support costs.

My Role

  • Title: Director, UX Design – Cloud Video & System Intelligence

  • Team: 5 designers, 1 researcher, 1 PM, 2 engineering leads

  • Timeframe: 9 months (concept to rollout)

  • Key Partners: Product, Engineering, Support Ops, Sales Engineering, and major enterprise clients (e.g., education, healthcare)

  • Tools: MUI Charts, D3.js, Microsoft Clarity