Port Forwarding with Track Changes
Incognito Software Solutions
I designed a feature that helps broadband service providers track and manage port forwarding settings on customer devices. The key innovation: providers can now monitor whether configuration changes have been successfully applied.
Here's the challenge: service providers manage thousands of devices. To maintain system stability, they don't push changes to individual devices immediately. Instead, the system batches these changes and implements them gradually. This process takes time.
This creates a transitional period where changes are saved in the system but haven't yet been applied to the actual devices. Previously, this interim state wasn't clearly visible to users.
Most interfaces didn't effectively communicate this pending state, leaving users uncertain about the status of their device configurations.
I solved this by designing new interface patterns that explicitly show both completed changes and pending updates.
My approach focused on two key principles:
- Show status updates only when meaningful changes occur
- Use familiar text formatting to communicate status clearly, avoiding technical jargon and complex interface elements
These design patterns proved so effective that they were later adopted across other device management workflows throughout the system.
