Solution Builder
Zero to hero: designed a complex network planning and quoting system to feel simple, trustworthy, and fast.
Reduced sales cycle by 22% and influenced $1.5M in revenue.
Case Study | Equinix
Product Overview
Equinix Fabric & Network Edge is a part of Equinix’s product ecosystem and is used by IT and Networking professionals. The product allows customers to purchase virtual network devices from a marketplace of different vendors and configure and deploy them in real-time. After customers purchase virtual devices, they can add on various networking services like creating connections to pass data, controlling traffic and bandwidth, etc.
In this project, we introduced a brand new service, called Solution Builder, which lives in the Equinix Fabric & Network Edge portal.
Problem Statement
Equinix's enterprise sales cycle took 6 weeks to generate a single proposal. Global Solutions Architects stitched together Visio, Lucidchart, Excel, and a 20+ service product catalog across 4+ internal teams to produce one customer quote. Customers couldn't see pricing until the end. Architects couldn't show their work without rebuilding it across three tools.
Leadership asked me to "reduce the sales cycle." The real problem was fragmentation — existing tools forced a tradeoff between flexibility and accuracy, and no single tool combined visual network design with real-time pricing.
Role
Lead Product Designer
What I led:
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Product strategy for MVP definition
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Cross-functional alignment workshops across PM, engineering, and Solution Architects
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End-to-end experience design — flows to high-fidelity prototypes
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Design system extension for new network-building interactions
timeframe
Drove initial release in 4 months
category
UI/UX, User Research & Usability Testing, Journey Mapping, Interaction Design, Visual Design
Our Solution
Impact
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22% reduction in sales cycle time
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$1.5M additional revenue influenced
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78% adoption by Global Solutions Architects with no additional training required
My Design Process
For this project, I worked on a team of 1 researcher, 1 UX writer, a product team of 3, and a scrum team of 7 engineers. We were able to perform the following steps of the design process in a short timeframe before shipping the Solution Builder.
Current Experience
In the current Equinix Fabric & Network Edge product experience, users are required to jump into ordering a specific network item in order to view the cost of that item. There is no way to design network topologies in Equinix today, so users have resorted to alternative methods.
Since there is no way to explore all Equinix offerings, create a network design with those items, and view all of their costs from a single place, I decided to validate the need for this tool through user research.
Discovery & Research
The two personas who typically participate in visualizing networks are Network Architect customers and Equinix techincal sales employees called Global Solutions Architects (GSAs). Equinix GSAs collaborate with Network Architect customers to design network diagrams together to solve customers’ business use cases.
In order to better understand both personas’ needs or challenges when designing networks and understand customers’ pre-ordering experience with Equinix, we interviewed 6 Equinix Global Solutions Architects (GSAs) and 7 customers in Network Architect or Engineer roles.
We defined the following research goals for our interview script before speaking with them:
1
Why
Discover why GSAs and customers need to design network diagrams and their topic of discussion during that process
2
Current Process
Understand the current network design process, how pricing is discussed, and which tools
they use
3
Challenges
Uncover challenges faced during the network design process, challenges with various tools, or challenges when discovering and using Equinix products.
4
Validate
Validate the personas considered or uncover any additional personas
Interview Key Findings
We uncovered the following key points about the network design and diagramming process from user interviews:
Competitive Analysis
After interviews, I analyzed the tools participants mentioned they currently use, like Lucidchart and Microsoft Visio, and other competitors in the networking domain, like Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform, to identify how they are handling network design and if there are any gaps we can address.
Lucidchart and Microsoft Visio Analysis
Overall Strengths ✅
+ Lucidchart and Visio provided flexible canvases to drag and drop various shapes
+ They offered templates that provide guidance and save design time
+ They provide custom shape-importing functionality to tailor designs
Overall Weaknesses ❌
- There is no functionality offered for users to design their networks visually before they deploy or order items
- They have separate cost estimator tools, but lack a centralized, single location to design and estimate costs for the design
Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
Overall Strengths ✅
+ AWS and GCP displayed users’ inventories of deployed assets visually in topology or geographic views
+ They provided interactive visualizations, so users can view more information on metrics like traffic, health status, etc.
Overall Weaknesses ❌
- There is no functionality offered for users to design their networks visually before they deploy or order items
- They have separate cost estimator tools but lack a centralized, single location to design and estimate costs for the design
Ideation
After reviewing the various products in the network design domain, and analyzing their basic features, strengths, and weaknesses, I started ideating various opportunities that Equinix could solve for. Along with my team, I did a crazy eights exercise and brainstormed several ideas for potential features to include for MVP.
Goal
With the long list of potential features identified, I further worked with our product and engineering stakeholders to decide on a narrow, prioritized list to tackle for our minimum viable product (MVP). Framed the priority features that would best serve our users top needs, as the following 'How Might We' statements:
User Flows
Created user flows to further break down the MVP tasks and outline steps users would walk through when performing actions like exploring offerings, adding items to the network design, and viewing the costs for those items.
The user flows focused on the following 3 areas:
1
Creating a Network design diagram
2
Viewing, modifying, saving or sharing the network designs from an inventory.
3
Viewing or downloading the pricing information from the network design
Wireframes
After outlining flows, started with designing low fidelity wireframes to better envision a potential network designing solution, incorporated the key steps defined in the user flows and shared this first iteration with our product stakeholders to ensure alignment before moving onto higher fidelity designs and usability testing.
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Equinix Design System
I leveraged Equinix’s Quix design system to create high-fidelity designs to cover every workflow and interaction in more detail. Reused existing components when possible to maintain consistency, but made modifications and designed new components to address the use cases for this project.
Since Solution Builder is a new service, I designed and defined several new components and interactions for dragging and dropping resources tiles, connecting two tiles together, etc.
Iterative Design & Testing
After creating an interactive high-fidelity prototype, we did 3 rounds of remote moderated usability testing, first with 3 Global Solutions Architects (GSAs), then with 3 more GSAs, and then with 6 Network Architect/Engineer customers to uncover areas of improvement. We asked them to complete scenario-based tasks for mock networking use cases for which they would need to create a design and view the costs. We also followed up with open-ended questions to gauge their overall impressions of the Solution Builder MVP, what they would change, etc.
Through testing, we discovered the following usability challenges that we iterated on to improve:
Resource Panel Interaction Feedback & Improvements
Resource Panel Navigation Feedback & Improvements
Resource Tile Feedback & Improvements
Pricing Summary Feedback & Improvements
Working with Content
Throughout the design process, we worked with our UX Writer, Sarah B to review the copy for several iterations.
Development Handoff & Support
To better solidify the final designs, I designed edge cases, empty, and error states, etc.
Development team was involved early in the process and we reviewed design iterations several times to ensure alignment, at this stage, I focused more on development support and documented design specifications with overviews of the feature, in-scope flows, detailed components, and interactions, etc.
Final Design Solution
The final Solution Builder service enables Equinix Global Solutions Architects and Network Architect customers to visualize their network and estimate their costs before purchasing. Users can explore various Equinix products and services in the resource panel and drag-and-drop them into their network design. Users can view the cost breakdowns of their designed network configurations from the pricing summary, so they can share these estimates with their team before proceeding to order.
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Challenges & Strategic Decisions
1. Pricing logic debate
Product and engineering wanted pricing shown only after submission. I pushed back — built mockups showing real-time pricing as architects designed, making the value self-evident to stakeholders. Real-time pricing became core to the MVP.
2. No formal requirements
Leadership defined only the goal: reduce sales cycle time. I led a scoping workshop with PMs and Solution Architects, translating vision into user flows, prioritized pain points, and a clear MVP scope.
3. Cross-product priority alignment
Multiple teams — pricing tools, backend services — were working in parallel with no shared rhythm. I initiated weekly design playbacks to keep everyone in sync and ensure components scaled across product lines.
Summary & Retrospective
Overall, I really enjoyed designing the Solution Builder and I am proud to have successfully shipped the Beta version. I enjoyed contributing to the end-to-end design process, learning more about our users and their needs for the network design space, and collaborating with product, engineering, and other stakeholders.
Measuring Success and Impact
As the three usability testing rounds progressed, more participants were able to complete the tasks in a shorter time. Since we recently shipped the beta, we are currently collecting customer feedback and satisfaction through a CSAT feedback survey. We are also currently measuring and analyzing adoption, conversion, drop-off, and time on pages.
Equinix stakeholders are highly enthusiastic about this project. The Solution Builder is shaping up to be the largest, new offering with several Equinix products in the works to be onboarded onto it in future phases.
Reflection & Next Steps
Phase 2 priorities I helped scope before handoff:
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Network design templates for common topologies (reducing setup time for new users)
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Real-time multi-user collaboration on designs (Architect + customer co-design)
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Integrated ordering — translating designed solutions directly into Equinix orders, closing the loop from design to deployment
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