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Martin Hardee

Director, Cisco.com

Cisco.com

Martin Hardee is Director for Cisco.com, and spends his days and nights thinking about how to create great and useful experiences across the Cisco.com sites. Martin works closely with the talented design professionals across Cisco.

Before Cisco, Martin spent many years leading web experience design at Sun Microsystems where where he was active from the early days of web usability with usability guru Jakob Nielsen, grew the company's popular Java sites, and was then User Experience Director for Sun's many external web properties.

In his spare time, Martin rollerblades, spends time with his family, goes to a lot of live music and maintains DesignComics.org.

Articles

Focusing on customers’ top digital journeys

1 min read

I've often written about how we optimize to our Customers' and Partners' top journeys across our web sites and mobile apps. We've found that focusing relentlessly on the top things that...

April 1, 2015

DIGITAL AND SOCIAL

Feed Your April 1st Appetite with These Retro Cisco.com Pages

1 min read

It’s fun seeing some of the quirky examples of home pages on web sites today, including Amazon’s retro “April 1, 1999” page. I can’t think of a time we’ve ever done anything like that on Cisco.com, mainly because we don’t want to distract customers from the jobs they’re coming to do with us.  But, if you […]

February 3, 2015

DIGITAL AND SOCIAL

Giving attention, not getting attention

1 min read

This recent post in the Harvard Business Review, Your Digital Strategy Shouldn’t Be About Attention, is a good reminder that the best digital experiences come from listening to your visitors and then anticipating what they want. We’re tried to follow that philosophy on Cisco.com and in our mobile apps, through observing by listening, invisible change,  […]

February 3, 2015

DIGITAL AND SOCIAL

Our spiffy new tablet app

1 min read

In case you missed it, Cisco now has a tablet version of our flagship app.  And it’s great. Some new features include: Products use a ‘touch’ visual navigation structure Quicker navigation through ‘bookmarking’  without the need to login Video Datasheets delivered via the tablet app Comprehensive Internet of Everything and social media coverage Partner content, […]

November 25, 2014

DIGITAL AND SOCIAL

“Invisible change” in your favorite web sites

1 min read

My colleague Bill Skeet published an interesting blog a few weeks ago about “Invisible Change” — the improvement and innovation that happens quietly in digital experiences such as web sites and mobile apps. You may have noticed — or not noticed — this phenomenon on web sites you visit frequently. For instance, you may have […]

November 17, 2014

DIGITAL AND SOCIAL

Giving Agile A Brain

2 min read

There’s a pretty great, short post from Business Insider last year that’s been getting re-circulation recently. It’s one-sentence summaries of famous business books like The Innovator’s Dilemma, Good to Great, Outliers, Purple Cow and The Lean Startup. I particularly liked BI’s short summary Eric Ries’ book The Lean Startup, which is centered around the concept […]

September 29, 2014

DIGITAL AND SOCIAL

Digital Design Visual and Otherwise

5 min read

First impressions really matter. We know this intuitively, and you may also have seen the stats that say it takes web visitors less than two-tenths of a second to form...

July 4, 2014

DIGITAL AND SOCIAL

You Can Observe A Lot By Watching.

2 min read

Recently at CiscoLive!, we spent a full week with customers and partners doing in-detail usability tests of Cisco.com and some of our mobile sites and apps. This is one of the main methods we use to make our web and mobile easier. What’s a usability test? Something different than you might think. While you’ve probably heard […]

Cisco.com Search Tune-up: The little things count

1 min read

There’s a nice article by Web analysts SiteIQ this month about Cisco.com search, with the flattering headline “Cisco aces search again…” The post points out how we do little things like how we: 1. Link to Google for more search, in case you didn’t find what you were looking for, or if you want a […]

April 24, 2014

DIGITAL AND SOCIAL

Cisco.com #tbt #throwbackthursday

1 min read

Cisco.com circa 1996. (I will brace myself for the “bring it back!” comments. 🙂 )

April 8, 2014

DIGITAL AND SOCIAL

A Simple Update To Our Cisco.com Menus

1 min read

Did you notice the recent change to the menus on Cisco.com?  We call them “megamenus” — those convenient lists that fly down when you mouse over the masthead bar on any page on Cisco.com. We recently updated the “Products & Services” megamenu on the site to make it more readable and simplify navigation. Here’s the […]

February 10, 2014

DIGITAL AND SOCIAL

Measuring (and Improving!) Digital Experience

3 min read

There’s an adage that “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it,” and all of us that are in the business of managing or running things pretty much live by that. But, how to do you measure something as squishy and ephemeral as an “experience”? And, what experiences are worth managing? At Cisco, we’ve […]

October 10, 2013

DIGITAL AND SOCIAL

Cisco.com URLs will be changing (but we’ve got you covered)

1 min read

Later this year, many URLs on Cisco.com are going to change. But don’t worry: We’re putting a mechanism in place that will take you to the right location even if you have bookmarks or are coming from external references. These redirects will be automatic, but if you’re curious, here’s how the URLs will change: Before: […]

July 18, 2013

DIGITAL AND SOCIAL

Some Nice Improvements to Cisco.com Search

1 min read

We’ve made some important updates to the search experience on Cisco.com: For some top product searches, we delivering a “product information box” of the most important information in one place. We’ve done some significant redesign of the user front-end to improve the user experience Searches using Product IDs Significant work to greatly reduce the number […]

Cisco.com is a Top Global Enterprise Site

1 min read

Cisco.com has been featured by industry research firm ByteLevel Research as “Best Global Enterprise Technology Website” in their latest ‘Global By Design” installment focusing on globalization web practices in tech B2B. ByteLevel Research is the author of the annual Globalization Digital Scorecard, where Cisco.com was ranked #4 worldwide in 2013 among such peers as Adobe, GE, […]

March 15, 2013

DIGITAL AND SOCIAL

Cisco Product Quick Reference Guide

1 min read

The 2013 Cisco Product Quick Reference Guide is now shipping, and you can order it right now on Cisco.com. The 2013 guide provides an overview of the many Cisco products, services, and solutions for every part of your business. It’s all you need in one portable guide:  An easy-to-use reference that includes chapters on routing, […]

January 22, 2013

DIGITAL AND SOCIAL

Fun and interactive fascination in Fast Company and Wired this month

1 min read

I always enjoy Fast Company and Wired. But this month there’s something extra in both: You can make the Internet of Everything come alive using your smartphone or tablet, via a Cisco ad in the magazine, just like my colleague Jeanette is doing here with her phone: You can do it, too: 1. First, get […]

December 10, 2012

DIGITAL AND SOCIAL

Paper (and Other Things) That Come Alive #TomorrowStartsHere

1 min read

Here is something fun you can do today with your smart phone or tablet. It’s an app that brings the Internet of Things alive from a newspaper or screen. How to get it: 1. First, go grab a copy of today’s global Wall Street Journal and find the Cisco TOMORROW Starts Here ad, which is […]