Overview
Prisma SASE AI-powered Autonomous Digital Experience Management (ADEM) empowers IT operations teams to deliver strong application experiences for users working from anywhere. As Principal UX Designer I led UX strategy, research, and design execution. The goal was real-time visibility and actionable insight into application experience issues, so administrators could identify and resolve problems affecting end users.
ADEM is a premium add-on for Strata Cloud Manager, giving users complete visibility and proactive control over application access and experience issues.
The problem
Network administrators were facing an overwhelming number of support tickets about degraded application experience. Troubleshooting was hard because there was no visibility into the factors involved — device performance, local network conditions, internet connectivity.
Before Real User Monitoring (RUM), ADEM relied solely on synthetic tests that simulated network conditions. Useful for baseline measurement, but synthetic tests alone could not capture actual user interactions or device-specific problems in real time.
Target users
ADEM has two primary user types. For both, a core task is troubleshooting application access and experience quality.
- IT administrators — manage user access, troubleshoot authentication issues, and ensure seamless connectivity.
- Network administrators — diagnose network performance and connectivity failures across distributed users, applications, and locations.
The solution
The major UX contribution was developing Real User Monitoring, which extended the product well beyond synthetic testing.
Interactive visualization
An interface that provides a visual overview of user experience issues, making trends easier to identify and prioritize. It gives a complete view of application experience issues at a glance, with drill-down into categories for granular resolution. Web performance metrics like Core Web Vitals quickly highlight whether a significant share of activity is slow or degraded.
Root cause analysis
I redesigned the root cause analysis experience to align with users' mental model and surface key troubleshooting actions. The system correlates data from real user interactions and synthetic tests to isolate whether a problem stems from the device, the local network, or the application backend.
As users drill into the segmented sunburst chart they identify the contributing factor to poor experience — device issues, LAN performance, application errors. Each segment expands into detail such as high CPU usage, Wi-Fi latency, or slow server response, accompanied by a list of impacted users and suggested remediation. This reduces guesswork by clearly indicating the primary driver.
Actionable insights
Beyond identifying issues, ADEM now supports immediate corrective action. The interface surfaces recommended remediation — upgrade an endpoint client, reconfigure a network setting — and links out to relevant tools or scripts. Having insight and next steps in the same console reduces time-to-resolution, often resolving in minutes what previously required a lengthy investigation.
Research and process
- Data-driven insights — we regularly reviewed qualitative feedback and quantitative analytics to identify problem areas. Support ticket logs and usage data showed where the product was falling short.
- User interviews — in-depth interviews and discovery sessions with IT administrators uncovered workflow pain points, particularly the difficulty of pinpointing whether an issue originated on the device, the network, or the application.
- Usability testing — we built interactive prototypes and ran iterative tests with real users, confirming before launch that the RUM dashboard and root cause views were intuitive and measurably improved troubleshooting efficiency.
My role
- Principal UX Designer responsible for UX strategy and design of this feature.
- Employed a data-driven design approach, working closely with UX Research.
- Facilitated monthly Data Dive-In sessions with the Product lead and UX researcher to review Pendo data and form hypotheses guiding design enhancements.
- Worked closely with Product and Engineering to incorporate actionable workflows.
- Partnered with the UX lead for the AI copilot product to define the generative AI experience and keep integrations aligned.
- Drove awareness, adoption, and consistency across internal teams.
Impact and results
- Enhanced data accuracy — ADEM now presents a complete picture of actual user experience rather than relying solely on simulation. Issues once missed by synthetic tests, like a specific page error or a device slowdown, are captured in real time.
- Improved troubleshooting speed — with clearer visuals and pinpointed root causes, early users of RUM reported substantially lower mean time to resolution. Administrators can address problems proactively, often before users report them.
- Higher user engagement — IT operations teams log in more frequently to check application and network health. ADEM became a daily-workflow tool because it consistently prevents minor issues from becoming major incidents.
Strong UX research, thoughtful design, and data-driven decisions produced a transformative product capability. Evolving ADEM with Real User Monitoring and an improved interface let IT operations troubleshoot more effectively and deliver better digital experience for users working from anywhere.