Industry

Consumer Networking Hardware

Role

Product Design • iOS • Android

NETGEAR

Driving a cultural shift at NETGEAR toward agile and user-centric software practices

As a senior lead UX Designer for the Core Apps team, I led the end-to-end UX efforts to revamp NETGEAR’s flagship Orbi and Nighthawk mobile apps. These apps serve as the primary interface for hardware onboarding and act as the central hub for accessing the device dashboard and related services. My primary focus was on improving the overall customer experience, streamlining setup flows, and enhancing usability for the hardware onboarding experience.

Full case study available on request

Shipped: New onboarding experience

Opportunity

Driving a culture shift from hardware-centric development to agile, user-focused software design

NETGEAR has led high-end personal networking hardware for over 25 years— winning a total of 23 Red Dot Design Awards for hardware excellence. However, their software experience lagged behind due to a hardware-centric development focus. I joined to help drive a broader shift toward modern, user-centered software processes.

Key contributions

The key project I led was redesigning the onboarding experience, which had been harming NETGEAR’s premium brand perception.

NETGEAR's key opportunity space centered around the following:


  • UI consistency issues, identified through audits conducted by the UX team

  • Ambiguous UX writing that created confusion about next steps, based on user research, app reviews, and internal findings

  • Unclear error messaging that led to user frustration, as reported by the research team and supported by user feedback via app reviews

Impact

Laying the foundation for the future

In my time at NETGEAR I’ve owned the revamp of the core app experience starting with onboarding

  • Refined and optimized our most critical flow — the new hardware onboarding flows

  • Refined UI for both iOS and Android platforms for NETGEAR’s Orbi and Nighthawk apps

  • Led the UX efforts for this product area, collaborating closely with product management and engineering leads

  • Spearheaded the transition to Figma as the primary design tool, replacing Sketch and Abstract

  • Mentored junior designers and interns

  • Improved the app store rating and new user CSAT score

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