My first idea was a chat inside the existing website. Competitive research changed my mind. Even OpenAI sends you to the separate ChatGPT app as soon as a chat runs. A chat product needs login, history, settings and its own navigation, and a marketing page can’t hold all that. I dropped the hybrid and designed a standalone app that the website links to.

The users were long-standing enterprise partners, vendors, operators and CMOs, who come back again and again. Saved history and context across sessions matter to them, which made the case for a standalone app.

The CMO and brand lead approved it, and it was built. The design took about three weeks, alongside other projects.

In 2026 I came back to it and took it further. The revisit lives inside Mist and starts from the equipment a customer already owns. When it’s time to replace hardware, it helps them put together a plan they can send to their Juniper partner.