A family of devices, designed across thirteen years.
I joined Cisco in 2007 as a lead designer on the desk-phone portfolio. I left in December 2020 as Senior Director leading design for the entire Collaboration Devices line of business — having shipped DX Series in 2014 (Red Dot), first-party headsets in 2020 (Red Dot), the first hardware product to disrupt our own portfolio, and the COVID pivot that redefined Cisco's hybrid-workplace device strategy. Four strategic bets, one continuously expanding leadership scope, and a design language that became foundational input into Momentum.
The bet
Cisco's collaboration devices had to be redesigned for a future where collaboration is for everyone and happens everywhere. A unified design organization, a shared design language, and willingness to disrupt our own portfolio before competitors did it for us.
Four bets across 13 years
Bet 1 — Scale personal telepresence beyond the executive class (2013–2014, DX Series)
Three desktop form factors on shared UX architecture. From $10K executive-suite video to $2–3K desktop video, in 2014. Red Dot 2014. The proof point was that Cisco could ship hardware competing on design quality, not just enterprise reliability.
Bet 2 — Bring headsets in-house instead of partnering (2016–2020, 500/700 portfolio)
First-party Cisco hardware integrated with Cisco's existing collaboration infrastructure. Real human-factors work on headband sizing, clamping force, materials specification. Cisco Headsets 500 and 700 series. Red Dot 2020. Fastest-growing product line in Cisco's hardware portfolio after launch.
Bet 3 — Disrupt our own portfolio (2017–2019, Webex Share)
A small device that enabled simple wireless content sharing to any HD display, integrated with the Cisco Webex platform, priced and positioned for spaces and contexts where Cisco devices had no presence. The methodology: design sprints plus lean UX for a hardware program. The downstream consequence: it spawned entirely new product categories — Webex Desk Hub, Webex Room Navigator, and the broader category of small-form-factor collaboration devices.
Bet 4 — Pivot for hybrid work (2020, Webex Desk Hub & Camera)
The program had been focused on hot-desking and providing analytics for IT. The pandemic invalidated that theory in weeks. The pivot required rapid expansion of the use-case research to include WFH-specific contexts: low-light video performance, background noise cancellation, audio quality in non-purpose-built home spaces, privacy considerations for shared home environments.
Across all four bets, the design organization kept doing the same thing: bridging the org structures that made each device hard to ship. The leadership skill that mattered most wasn't shipping any one device — it was building the team that could span those divides.
The shipped portfolio
DX Series (2014), Cisco Headsets 500/700 portfolio (2020), Webex Share and the downstream Webex Room Navigator, Webex Desk Hub & Camera, the Webex Room Phone, and the broader Cisco desk-phone portfolio including the 7800/8800 series.
The design language established through DX Series, refined through Headsets, and unified across Desk Hub became foundational input into Momentum — the design system that runs the entire Cisco Collaboration portfolio across both applications and devices.