Akamai GeoDelivery Policy Manager
Akamai’s GeoDelivery service enables customers to set policies that govern how internet traffic is routed across regions. For many organizations and governments, this control is critical: some need to ensure data remains within a country’s borders, while others require certain regions to be excluded. Previously, this process was handled behind the scenes by engineers, requiring customers to go through support channels to make changes. With the new feature, customers could create and manage policies directly within the application, giving them a visual reference for their setup and eliminating reliance on manual intervention.
My role was to design the policy management experience—focused on list creation, editing, and routing rules—in a way that handled complex, highly specific use cases while remaining flexible enough to support future expansion.
Research & Strategy
I collaborated closely with the project manager to map requirements and anticipate future needs. We invented the customer workflow, identified where errors or misconfigurations could have major consequences, and explored ways to design interactions that would communicate the process, and set expectations.
Emphasis was placed on:
- Providing clear visibility into existing policies and their activity status.
- Designing a form structure that responded dynamically to user selections.
- Creating fail-safes (locked states, warnings) to prevent errors when critical changes were made.
- Shifting from an engineer-mediated workflow to a self-service model that empowered customers directly.
- Building flexibility into the system so it could scale to accommodate more countries and evolving rule sets in the future.
The Solution
- Policy Overview: On entry, users immediately see a list of existing policies with concise details and status indicators, helping them quickly understand what’s active before making changes.
- Dynamic Form Design: The policy creation form updates in real time based on user selections. For example, choosing one type of rule might unlock or disable additional fields, reducing confusion and keeping the workflow relevant.
- Selections Summary: For long lists of hostnames, a persistent blue summary box displayed the user’s selections, keeping context visible without requiring scrolling or navigation away from the form.
- Safeguards & Warnings: Certain selections locked portions of the form and triggered warnings when critical actions were about to occur, reducing the risk of misconfiguration.
- Future-Ready Structure: The architecture of the form and list management system was designed to flex with the addition of new geographies and more advanced routing rules.
Results & Impact
The redesigned workflow transformed GeoDelivery from a support-channel–driven process into a self-service experience. Customers could now configure routing policies on their own, with full visibility into the setup and confidence that their rules were applied correctly.
Complex workflows were streamlined into a guided, transparent process, reducing error rates while improving speed and usability. By balancing flexibility with safeguards, the system supported both immediate, tactical needs and longer-term scalability, preparing the product for future expansion into additional countries and policy types.
