Systems Design ● Case studies
Definition
Systems design is the identification of key components of a product’s technical and business environment and the requirements for how they will interact with one another. This is documented through the use of a system model▸.
A system model has no set resolution or level of detail. It shows whatever is necessary for the extended product team to make decisions about product requirements, resolve critical issues, and strategically plan for future development.
A system model utilizes familiar design visualization tools as necessary: user journeys, functional flows, data diagrams, and informational architectures. A complete system model includes user motivations, current business processes, external business and social factors, and products and services your product must integrate with but over which you may have no control.
AI is useful at this stage in helping document the resulting system design. But AI can’t replace thorough customer research, especially in narrow, specialized verticals, which can uncover unexpected business processes and requirements.
Case studies
Integrate back-end services ● Avaya
Avaya wanted a desktop application which would fully integrate the company’s email, voicemail, text, call logs, and video services. As I gathered requirements about these existing services, I found that existing, isolated development teams had done little integration planning or coordination. My team, in the absence of a systems architect, did the work.
Manual device configuration and account creation ● Amazon Kindle
Kindles originally shipped with a data plan and were pre-integrated with the user’s Amazon account. To reduce costs, second-generation Kindles were going to ship with no account or networking pre-configuration and two hardware configurations—WiFi-only or WiFi and data. Initial product requirements were limited to successful, “happy path” use cases. I expanded the requirement set to anticipate a wide variety of error states, including Kindle buyers who did not already have an active Amazon account.
Support new business use cases ● ACME
The ACME product suite consists of a B2B administrative backend, white-label consumer B2C online retail experience, and an iOS point-of-sale and visitor access management app. ACME clients are typically venues such as museums, theaters, and event spaces. ACME wanted to integrate third-party resellers into the platform. I mapped all ticket ordering journeys and the subsequent systems integrations ACME would need in order to support resellers.
Standardize data update model ● ACME
ACME uses templates to generate series of event instances, not unlike how Outlook manages meetings. However, ACME events include a lot of additional data points such as pricing, assigned personnel, event capacity, and the like. There was no agreement about how edits to instances or templates propagated through a schedule resulting in unpredictable outcomes. I designed a standardize, bi-directional data interaction.