Inflect

Data Center Search

Data Center Search allows users find data centers anywhere around the world based on a number of search criteria such as location, technical specs, certifications, and ecosystem (the companies renting space within the data center).

Depending on business requirements, a user could be looking for a West Coast data center that is PCI-DSS compliant and offers a direct connection to CenturyLink:

Or if their workflow is power intensive—for instance in the case of cryptocurrency mining—they might be interested in a data center with high power per rack:

Data center pages

Each data center on Inflect has a dedicated page. When I joined inflect, the product was still in private beta and data center pages had received little design treatment. I led a design sprint to create a visually engaging template that would allow users to easily find technical specs and browse ecosystem participants:

I also created a template for all organizations in the Inflect database, highlighting their points of presence across different data centers worldwide:

Routefinder

Private network deals are frequent, high-stake, and very lucrative (about $4 billion spent annually). Yet, in the absence of a centralized search tool, the research process remains mostly manual. A few months after joining Inflect, I started working on a network connectivity search tool to address the following pain points:

• There is no good way to research network connectivity in the industry 

• Information about service providers, latency, and pricing is opaque and fragmented

• People rely on past experiences and word of mouth

• Mistakes are costly (long contracts)

I worked with a colleague to schedule interviews with industry experts and potential users. I also reviewed and analyzed a number of related products such as Zayo Tranzact, Digital Realty’s internal connectivity tool, ThousandEyes… But some of the most relevant insights came from consumer products I use everyday. I was particularly interested in Google Maps’ directions feature, and flight search tools such as Hipmunk and Kayak.

I took notes and sketched different approaches throughout the research process:

My first explorations borrowed heavily from flight search tools, with filters on the left:

As clunky as it was, this first prototype generated excitement within the team and beyond. Potential users were excited and wanted to buy licenses. Service providers wanted to contribute data.

As Routefinder shaped up, concrete problems emerged. How can Inflect’s data team source latency and pricing information? How easily can we obtain KMZ files for route paths? Which techniques can we use to estimate latency? Do we need to restructure our data model? 

We ended up narrowly scoping the MVP with the intention to quickly iterate:

• Users can select data centers and Cloud regions in Inflect’s database.

• Measured latency is out of scope. We’ll use estimated latency.

• The actual location of fiber-optic cables is out of scope. We’ll use network provider points of presence as a proxy.

• Product & pricing information are out of scope

• Users must be able to export route details summary and use it as a sales order. Transactions are out of scope.

For the MVP prototype, I removed a lot of metadata such as product information and pricing, and dove deeper in the interaction. One of the main challenges was to group routes intelligently to avoid repetitive results. For instance, if several network providers serviced the same route, I wanted to avoid listing it several time in a row:

We user-tested the second prototype and obtained the following insights:

• Users want to be able to search enterprise locations

• Users like the route visualization charts

• Latency information needs to be more prominent

• Users want to see actual cable routes

As prototype iterations gained in fidelity, it became apparent that Routefinder had a life of its own. I restructured the Inflect platform into separate products—the Inflect Suite. The suite structure gave Inflect more of a polished, Enterprise look. It also made it easier to explain the value proposition of each product. I added a product menu in Inflect’s navigation bar, allowing users to rapidly switch between different products:

Here is a preview of the final prototype for Routefinder (click on pictures to play):