Shanil Patel
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Exploring how to monitor a data center.

Leveraging user research, competitive analysis, and design to evaluate the feasibility of re-building a data center monitoring tool.

Introduction

Data centers have a map that shows how servers are powered and who they belong to. Equinix was looking to re-design their tool to be more usable, aesthetically pleasing, and performant.

Equinix is the market leader in co-location and data center services. They literally power the internet.

Client

Equinix

Duration

3 months - 2020

Team

Mattie Alston (Interaction Designer)

Role

Lead designer responsible for research, design, and strategy.

Understanding existing issues and user workflows

When this project came to use we were told a tool exists but no one was using it. Through UX audits, stakeholder interviews, and contextual inquires we wanted to understand why and what are users doing instead.

Through a UX heuristic evaluation we uncovered performance, usability, and accuracy issues with the existing tool that made it virtually unusable.
Through stakeholder interviews we understood why this tool exists and what they thought about it. The findings indicated no one wanted to use this tool given the usability issues.
After speaking with users and customers across the world we learned no one was using this tool. Instead they used paper diagrams, custom tooling, and 3rd party software to get answers to their questions.

We also learned the team that built the original tool left Equinix and left no documentation on how it was built.
If we wanted to improve this tool we had to do it from the ground up.

Balancing flexibility and structure through framework based design

I partnered with engineering to translate our research into a scaleable backend and frontend framework that would support the flexibility needed for the open source but also provide enough structure to allow for consistent user experiences.

Understanding the landscape and developing domain knowledge

I didn't know much about how data centers were powered. I've also never encountered these tools but I was curious! Mattie and I dove deep and spoke to anyone that had knowledge. We also looked at competitor tools and synthesized the findings into visualizations that helped design and communicate what was available.

Custom designed icons
Quick selection actions
Contextual data
Customizability based on use case

Too expensive to build but our research led to onboarding a 3rd party tool that met user needs.

Tech debt made re-building expensive

We learned the existing tool could not be updated since no one knew how it was built. The cost of understanding and overhauling the existing system would be too expensive.

Users were already using other tools and workarounds

Our user research into workflows and workarounds surfaced the tools users were already using to do the same. This data allowed business leaders to make an informed decision.

Competitive analysis helped select the right tool

Through a competitive analysis we thoroughly evaluated 3rd party tools. Our evaluation criteria was informed by user needs, workflows, and familiarity.

Sometimes your solutions don't get built and that's okay.

As designers we push for our designs to be built but understanding the cost of building is equally important. Research is crucial and allows a designer to provide additional value outside of just creating user interfaces.

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