First prototyped concept for distributed computing service

About

Equinix is the world’s largest IBX data center & colocation provider, offering the fastest application performance, lowest latency routes worldwide and a digital ecosystem for financial, content or rich-media, enterprise, and cloud networks. Equinix connects the world’s leading businesses to their customers, employees and partners inside the world’s most connected data centers in 44 markets across five continents. In the United States, Equinix operates data centers in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, Seattle, Silicon Valley and Washington D.C.

Edge Metal service offers to its organic bare metal solution development, Equinix aims to create advanced solutions for enterprises to rapidly deploy digital infrastructure at global scale with differentiated performance and robust integration to the public cloud. Businesses will be able to deploy advanced IT infrastructures via the physical or virtual consumption model of their choice, enabling them to more easily reach everywhere, interconnect everyone and integrate everything that matters to their business.

Goal

Create a unified, consistent user experience for the service based on Equinix Style Guide

Make a wide range of configurations accessible in one click

All the settings can be set for one or multiples projects/locations

Users are able to copy multiple connections, edit and delete services

Present an interactive prototype that feels like real product

Solution

Unified consistent color scheme and typography based on corporate style

Consistent user flow matching other services and user expectation

Fully developed first day user experience with explanatory steps

Simple way to set up all required settings

Lets users set optional settings later on

Users are able to access existing connections to servers and edit nodes/locations

My Role

As a UX/UI Designer, I created a prototype for the Edge Metal service that showed the product idea. The service aimed to create advanced solutions for enterprises to rapidly deploy digital infrastructure on a global scale with differentiated performance and robust integration to the public cloud. Although I had a basic understanding of Networking and Cloud connections from my Computer Programming degree, the design required deep knowledge of colocations, networks and cloud connections, and virtual nodes. I spent time drawing user flows and consulting with network experts and developers to make first-version high-fidelity wireframes. After 3 weeks and multiple iterations, the final interactive prototype with real-time experience was presented. As a result, the Project was funded. After that, I understood that challenging tasks allow me to improve my knowledge and find effective solutions in a short time.

Result

It was one of the most complicated and interesting projects I have worked on because of its complexity. I was able to create a clickable real-time experience of the new and complex service. The layout allows users to set all required configurations in simple steps with minimum effort. The design allows manipulating and extending current service connections, as well as adding or changing location, storage, or type of connection. The Interface Design was made based on the corporate colors and typography.

Used Tools