Wi-Fi Planner Pro

Wi-Fi Planner is an enterprise tool for planning wireless networks: model the space, predict coverage, and decide where access points go before anyone climbs a ladder. This was my last project at D-Link: three months, and I was the only designer.

The brief named three problems:

I compared NetSpot and Ruijie's planning tool. Anything they could calculate, ours could too. The real gap was how long it took before any calculation meant something: first you load a floor plan, draw every wall, set each wall's material and place the access points.

So the comparison produced a list of frictions, not features. For keyboard behaviour (delete, undo, copy, paste) I followed Microsoft 365 and Adobe, because that's where people last did those actions.

I tested with IT and R&D colleagues, simulating a first session: load the floor plan, draw the walls and set their materials, place the access points. Nobody struggled with the calculations or reading the heatmap. Every session slowed down at drawing walls and fixing mistakes.

One limit: everyone tested understands networking. They could tell me whether the tool got in the way, not whether a newcomer would understand it.

Problem. Every wall took repeated steps, and the tool can't say anything until every wall exists.

What changed. Wall materials can be switched while drawing, grouped into common, wood, doors and windows, each with its attenuation in dB. Frequent actions got shortcuts, and the canvas follows the delete, undo, copy and paste people already know.

The rule. Does this change what the user does next? If yes, it stays on screen. If not, it moves to advanced. The default view has four things: floor plan, heatmap, access point positions and legend. Signal values printed on the map were removed.

The disagreement. Engineering wanted every parameter visible. Instead of arguing show or hide, I asked what the main user needs answered in the first 30 seconds, then tested prototypes with real tasks. Where it landed: minimal by default, and advanced mode remembers your setting.

Problem. Green to red is the obvious choice, but for people with red-green colour deficiency the two ends look almost the same.

What changed. After talking it through with IT and R&D, I chose red, orange, yellow, green, blue: the ramp network software has used for years, so specialists read it without a legend. The legend also got the words Good and Poor, because the strong-signal end is red, which surprises newcomers.

Every screen went to engineering as an annotated spec: numbered components, the exact fill, stroke and text colour for each, all four button states, and file names wherever an asset was needed. It cut out a whole class of "which grey was that?" conversations.