03 · Cisco
From Community to Playbook
Building Cisco's AI UX foundation — from community, to playbook, to tooling. As the embedded DPM on a small dedicated core team, I helped get Cisco's first Agentic UX Playbook off the ground — from early development through alpha launch across 3 business units.
Role
Lead Design Program Manager, Cisco Security DesignOps
Scope
Small dedicated team building Cisco's Agentic UX foundation; alpha across 3 BUs
Tools
Figma, Webex, Cursor, GitHub, Claude Code
01 — The Challenge
A new product category with no established design foundation.
- AI was moving fast and Cisco's design org had no established foundation for designing agentic AI experiences — no shared principles, processes, or guidelines.
- Designers across the org were running into the same AI UX questions independently, with no shared space to learn from each other.
- Building something genuinely new — in a space where the industry hadn't established best practices — meant operating under real ambiguity on tight timelines.
02 — Approach
Community first. Then playbook. Then tooling.
01
AI UX Guild
Before the playbook work began, I helped establish the AI UX Guild — a bi-weekly forum bringing design representatives from across Cisco actively working on AI UX challenges. It became the connective tissue that informed the playbook: a living feedback loop of real practitioners shaping the principles and guidelines. Today it has grown to 200+ members.
02
Embedded DPM on the Core Team
I joined the small dedicated team as the embedded DPM, working closely with the Design Lead who owned content and strategy. From earliest stages through launch, I ran weekly standups, monitored progress, managed risks and timelines, and made sure nothing fell through the cracks while we built something genuinely new.
03
Rollout Planning Across 3 BUs
When it was time to launch, I owned the end-to-end rollout plan — sequencing across 3 business units, coordinating with stakeholders in each BU, and building the communications strategy that introduced designers to something new. With an alpha, framing matters: designers needed to understand what the playbook was, what it wasn't, and how to engage as early adopters.
04
Connecting the Dots to MCP
Before going on leave, I played a key role in connecting the playbook team with Cisco's internal AI group — initiating the early conversations that led to the development of an MCP, enabling designers to interact directly with AI tools using playbook content. Sometimes the most impactful program work is knowing which people need to find each other.
03 — Outcomes
Guild → Agentic UX Playbook → MCP.
- The alpha playbook launched successfully across 3 Cisco business units — putting Agentic UX guidance into designers' hands at a moment when the industry was still figuring it out.
- The initiative continued to evolve after the alpha, becoming Cisco's full Agentic UX Playbook — a dedicated internal resource with its own website.
- The MCP groundwork I helped initiate became a working tool that lets designers interact with AI using playbook content directly.
- The AI UX Guild has grown to 200+ members across Cisco and remains an active community for the practice.
What Stakeholders Say
Darin was instrumental in accelerating AI adoption and helping establish and scale our agentic design strategy across the organization and beyond. Any team looking for a design program leader that can successfully navigate the fast-moving AI landscape would be lucky to have Darin.
04 — What I Learned
"Launching something genuinely new requires a different kind of program management — comfort with ambiguity, and helping people engage with something before it's fully formed."
"In complex organizations, some of the most valuable program work isn't building systems — it's knowing which people need to find each other, and making that introduction happen."
"Being part of the team that helped Cisco's designers engage with agentic AI early — before the industry had figured it out — is work I'm genuinely proud of."
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