# Cisco Spark

The future of digital collaboration

- Role: Product Designer
- Company: Cisco
- Year: 2015
- Tags: Enterprise, Collaboration, Research
- Canonical: https://austastic.com/work/cisco-spark

Led future-looking research and design for Cisco Spark's collaboration platform, including the Windows desktop app and mobile features.

Led a research team studying the pain points of distributed teams to inform product strategy for the next 10 years of mobile collaboration.

Designed video conferencing, onboarding, and search features across Cisco Spark's multi-platform product.

Lead designer for the Windows desktop native platform.

## Overview

I worked with Cisco Spark to help design the future of mobile collaboration. I oversaw future-looking research and user testing, as well as the design of the Windows platform and various features on mobile.

## The future of digital collaboration.

### Research phase.

During the research phase I led a team of designers to understand the problem space of remote collaboration in modern work. Principally, we were concerned with the pain points that distributed teams face as they collaborate on projects across the board. Our findings were instrumental in product strategy at Cisco Spark.

Our team was tasked with looking to what mobile collaboration could look like 10 years in the future, so we really tried to distill our research down to core problems that result from teams that are not co-located.

The research phase of this project involved collecting information via surveys, interviews, field observations, literature review, and competitive analysis.

![Research artifacts from the collaboration study](https://austastic.com/images/cisco-spark/research.jpg)

### Conceptual prototyping.

The second phase of the project involved creating a conceptual prototype of what the future of digital collaboration in the workplace could be.

We created over 6 iterations of various concepts over the course of this three-month phase. Prototypes had us putting projectors on rooms, teleporting video feeds around buildings, and more.

Each phase was tested with potential end users, and revised based off of what we learned through observation and post-interviews.

![Conceptual prototype iterations for future collaboration](https://austastic.com/images/cisco-spark/research.jpg)

### Product development.

I designed many features and aspects of Cisco Spark’s multi-platform product including video conferencing interfaces, product onboarding/first time experience, and search.

I was also the lead designer for the Windows desktop native platform for Spark.

During my tenure at Cisco Spark, I pushed for user research, developing awesome personas, and conducting usability tests on our product.

Much of my work at Cisco cannot be shared online.

![Cisco Spark product interface](https://austastic.com/images/cisco-spark/product.jpg)

## Contact

Austin McCasland — Staff Product Designer, Meta Reality Labs

- Email: austastic@gmail.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/austastic/
- Web: https://austastic.com

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