Case study

FortiPlus

A unified, AI-powered sidebar that brings every tool a Fortinet support engineer needs into one place — without interrupting their work.

Role
UX/UI Designer
Timeframe
2025
Focus
Enterprise UXAI / GenAIWeb App

The Old Story

Support engineers jump between scattered tools just to work on one case.

Every time a customer encounters a problem with Fortinet's product, they file a service ticket, which will be taken care of by support engineers.

There are hundreds of thousands of tickets managed by support engineers on FortiCare.

FortiCare is lengthy and outdated, making it difficult to read and manipulate. Therefore, support engineers often go to external tools for ticket diagnose and resolution.

The FortiCare ticket console — a long, dense, outdated page of ticket fields.

Tools spreading across multiple locations is always painful.

  • Constant context switching out of the ticket.
  • High cognitive load.
  • Low visibility → low adoption of AI capabilities.

Smart Assist

Smart Assist — an AI panel that summarizes the ticket and drafts responses.

Vista

Vista — an AI panel with recommended debug steps and verification guidance.

Drafting Initial Solutions

One sidebar that brings every tool to the engineer without interrupting their work.

Collapsed

The ticket page with the FortiPlus panel fully collapsed — nothing but the ticket.

Expanded

The ticket with the FortiPlus panel expanded, showing AI skills inline.

Collapsed

The ticket with the FortiPlus panel collapsed to a compact rail.

Initial Solution

One unified tool that scales
Features could be added in the future

Non-disruptive presentation
Inline panel, ticket stays visible.

Progressive disclosure
Scan then expand with accordion sections.

Version 1 — the FortiPlus sidebar showing Smart Assist and Vista skills inline with the ticket.
Version 1 — expanded FortiPlus panel with an AI skill open beside the full ticket.

Feedback & Iteration

From a drawer full of separate apps to one set of AI skills engineers just reach for.

Hard to scale

The team is heading toward 20–30 functions. The panel risks becoming an "AI app store."

Regroup the list

Flat, function-based list Grouping by categories.

Mental model does not match

"Smart Assist vs Vista" is concept-stage, not a long-term model, and there are overlaps between the two.

Unified Gen AI Experience

Remove tool based partitions. Present all capabilities as modular AI functions.

Passive entry point

Collapsed panel gives no signal of what matters now. High-value signals stay buried.

Highlight primary info

Surface AI status early when the sidebar is collapsed.

Rethinking The Structure

Balancing efficiency, clarity, and room to grow

After revisiting everything from the first round, I extracted four major principles for successful design.

  • Speed
  • Context
  • Clarity
  • Scalability

I then played with different layouts for a better design.

  1. Autofill with AI-generated content

AI results go straight into the ticket. No copying and pasting between screens.

Autofill in action — an AI-generated summary populated straight into the ticket fields.
  1. Make status visible before expanding

Engineers can take a peek and decide whether to engage and investigate without opening the panel.

The collapsed rail evolves into a status-bearing sidebar that shows what matters before expanding.
  1. Rework on the structure

Start from the individual skills, then group them layer by layer. Then I explored different layouts and made a comprehensive comparison.

Breaking the panel down into individual skill elements, then grouping them layer by layer.

Layout exploration

Idea A: Open a new view

Idea A — tapping a skill opens it in a full new view, away from the ticket list.

Idea B: Accordion

Idea B — skills expand inline as accordion sections, keeping the ticket in view.

Idea C: Accordion

Idea C — a denser accordion variant with more detail surfaced per skill.

Evaluation

Speed: 2/5

Context: 2/5

Clarity: 4/5

Scalability: 4/5

Total: 12

Evaluation

Speed: 5/5

Context: 5/5

Clarity: 4/5

Scalability: 5/5

Total: 18

★ I went with this idea.

Evaluation

Speed: 3/5

Context: 2/5

Clarity: 4/5

Scalability: 3/5

Total: 12

Polish and finalize

Help engineers select, investigate and take actions.

I streamlined the whole workflow based on how engineers pick most urgent tickets and resolve them. Highlight most relevant info and guide them step by step.

Understand the issue

Investigate related info

Diagnose and troubleshoot

Understand the issue

The finalized FortiPlus panel guiding the engineer through the resolution workflow.

Hover and drag for bigger-size views.

Hovering and dragging the panel edge to resize a skill for a bigger view.

Click for full screen view.

Clicking to open a skill in full-screen for deep investigation.