Nokia
Network Services Platform
Building new product features and foundational design system components for an enterprise SaaS platform in the telecom network space.
Designing at scale for a telecommunication giant.
01.
Nokia's Network Services Platform help telecom providers manage and automate their IP and optical networks operations.
In the summer of 2023, I had the opportunity to join Nokia's network infrastructure UX team as a product design co-op. This 8-month experience was incredibly fulfilling, marked by great personal growth, meaningful connections, and an overall deeper understanding to the workflow of a product designer at an enterprise-level organization.
Role
Product Design Co-op
Team
Network Infrastructure
Contribution
Feature Design, Design System Maintanence
Duration
8 months
My 8 month contributions at a glance.
02.
I designed in a total of 12 sprints, owning a multitude of tickets that spanned new NSP features, enhancements to existing design components and patterns, and support for the design system migration from Marvel to Figma.
For feature design tickets, I would usually be assigned to different existing cross-functional teams and pods that owned a specific product area within NSP. For more design department related system work, I would collaborate more closely with my fellow designers on the NSP UX team.
Composition
1 x Product designer
1 x Project Manager
2 x Frontend/Backend Engineer
2 x UX Researcher + Copywriter
Shipped
2023-2024
3
New NSP features
Translating PM requirements into designs flows, and passed off to dev through a detailed spec.
10
New/improved system components
Designed and implemented in code to Nokia's FreeForm Design System codebase.
24+
Components recreated in Figma
As part of the NSP team's initiative to migrate their design system from Marvel to Figma.
2
Large-scale prototypes built
In preparation for usability testing at SReXperts, Nokia's annual product showcase.
My general design process.
03.
Whether designing new core components for FreeForm or feature tickets for NSP, I followed a consistent design process.
I learned to write implementation-ready design specifications, with detailed annotations describing interaction behaviors and documentation of all associated design tokens used within the design.
For my capstone project, I was given the opportunity to take the design lead on an epic feature that allowed table rows within a schema-form table to be multi-selected and then bulk edited, replaced, and deleted.
The process of this project was filled with difficult conditional logic and engineering constraints that required thoughtful design consideration.
This was a project I’m particularly proud of, and it was ultimately shipped in August 2024 as part of NSP Release 24.8.
Having an impact across a diverse range of design tasks.
04.
A small portion of my work done at Nokia was devoted to helping the UX team transition from Marvel to Figma by faithfully recreating design components for it to be scalable, customizable and responsive.
Utilizing Figma auto-layout, system tokens, variants, variables, grids, and constraints, I made sure the components were production-ready and that designers could easily drag and drop into their work.
In preparation for SReXperts, a bi-annual product showcase event showcasing Nokia’s IP network solutions, I prototyped many upcoming features UI flows for usability testing and demonstration purposes.
Using variables, conditionals and expressions, I created high fidelity, realistic prototypes that dynamically adapts based on users inputs in Figma.
Conclusion.
08.
Experienced being a designer in an Agile environment, designing within sprints and tracking my tasks using tickets.
On a typical day, I would handle multiple tasks and tickets at different stages of the design process. I've learned to prioritize my tickets, validate early, maintain open channels with with engineers and stakeholders, and also actively participate in sprint reviews and stand-ups for transparency.
Nokia had an well established co-op program with amazing mentorship.
The Nokia co op cohort had over 50 students each semester, which gave me the chance to connect with people from different disciplines across the country. Every co op was paired with a mentor, and throughout my eight month term I received ongoing design and career guidance.
Seeing products and features as parts of a holistic system.
I led the entire process from early discovery and research through ideation, design iterations, and final handoff of a detailed specification to engineering. Seeing the feature get shipped was incredibly rewarding, and the experience really solidified my confidence that this is the path I see myself pursuing.