Problem

Six GenAI pilots being built in parallel before design was involved.

Equinix's Enterprise Architecture team was building six GenAI pilots before I joined. Each was owned by a different business unit and built without design involvement. Each one worked. But employees had to know which pilot did what, open the right one, and adjust to its interface.

Takeaway

Six pilots that worked in isolation. The system between them didn't.

Problem

Six GenAI pilots being built in parallel before design was involved.

Equinix's Enterprise Architecture team was building six GenAI pilots before I joined. Each was owned by a different business unit and built without design involvement. Each one worked. But employees had to know which pilot did what, open the right one, and adjust to its interface.

Takeaway

Six pilots that worked in isolation. The system between them didn't.

Reframe

The brief was to bridge six pilots. The work was to unify them into one.

I was asked to bring design consistency across the six pilots and, where possible, bridge them. After the first round of stakeholder conversations, the problem underlying the brief became clear: bridging six internally built pre-production tools would preserve the fragmentation the pilots had created.

I took the reframing to Srivats Ravichandran. We aligned on unifying the pilots into a single company-wide tool with domain routing underneath, then pitched it together to stakeholders across Sales, Human Resources (HR), Operations (Ops), Information Technology (IT), Legal, and Enterprise Architecture (EA).

Takeaway

The pitch landed. Budget and ownership didn't. A decision on an all-employee tool couldn't come from any one of the six business units. It had to come from executive decision-makers leading Equinix's GenAI initiatives, and nothing on the table was moving them.

Sales

HR

Ops

IT

EA

Legal

Reframe

The brief was to bridge six pilots. The work was to unify them into one.

I was asked to bring design consistency across the six pilots and, where possible, bridge them. After the first round of stakeholder conversations, the problem underlying the brief became clear: bridging six internally built pre-production tools would preserve the fragmentation the pilots had created.

I took the reframing to Srivats Ravichandran. We aligned on unifying the pilots into a single company-wide tool with domain routing underneath, then pitched it together to stakeholders across Sales, Human Resources (HR), Operations (Ops), Information Technology (IT), Legal, and Enterprise Architecture (EA).

Takeaway

The pitch landed. Budget and ownership didn't. A decision on an all-employee tool couldn't come from any one of the six business units. It had to come from executive decision-makers leading Equinix's GenAI initiatives, and nothing on the table was moving them.

Sales

HR

Ops

IT

EA

Legal

Challenge

The pitch wasn't going to close it. Evidence would.

Each of the six business units had reasons to protect its own pilot. Competing priorities, fragmented decision-making, and the lack of centralized direction for an all-employee tool meant that a unified product couldn't be negotiated through meetings alone.

Stakeholders needed evidence, not a vision deck. I built the unified experience as a working prototype, put it in front of real users across regions, and let the research data do the alignment work the pitch couldn't.

Takeaway

The validation wasn't a post-launch check. It was how alignment and funding were earned.

Challenge

The pitch wasn't going to close it. Evidence would.

Each of the six business units had reasons to protect its own pilot. Competing priorities, fragmented decision-making, and the lack of centralized direction for an all-employee tool meant that a unified product couldn't be negotiated through meetings alone.

Stakeholders needed evidence, not a vision deck. I built the unified experience as a working prototype, put it in front of real users across regions, and let the research data do the alignment work the pitch couldn't.

Takeaway

The validation wasn't a post-launch check. It was how alignment and funding were earned.

Design

Five targeted design interventions. Each one solved a specific problem, not an aesthetic preference.

Design

Five targeted design interventions. Each one solved a specific problem, not an aesthetic preference.

Intervention 1

Ran stakeholder design workshops to establish shared vocabulary.

Jung-Soo Choi, Sal Sidani, and I co-facilitated three workshops across Sales, Operations, and IT. We used Jobs-to-be-Done to align on what employees needed from a GenAI tool, and Killer Questions to surface assumptions and risks across each business unit. The workshops produced the first shared problem statement across the teams.

Intervention 2

Designed domain routing as invisible infrastructure.

I designed the user-facing interaction model. Srivats engineered the routing underneath. Sales queries went to the sales pilot. HR queries to HR. Multi-domain questions pulled from multiple APIs, with information consolidated into a single response. The six pilots stayed alive underneath as domain APIs.

Intervention 3

Built a custom design system for AI-native interaction patterns.

Sal Sidani and I built a design system for conversational AI. I created AI-native components that the existing library didn't cover. Sal reviewed for consistency against the broader Equinix visual language. These patterns needed their own foundation, built once.

Intervention 4

Added guided prompts to solve the blank-page problem.

Early usability sessions showed that employees who hadn't used GenAI tools before didn't know how to start. A blinking cursor produced hesitation. I designed guided prompts: role-based, activity-based, and generic starters. Users could edit, ignore, or send them.

Intervention 5

Ran sentiment analysis as validation and alignment.

I designed a mixed-methods study, conducted with six active beta users of E-GPT across EMEA, APAC, and AMER. Jung-Soo and I co-ran interviews, combining System Usability Scale (SUS) scoring before and after the redesign with open-ended questions on satisfaction, value, and usage. I translated findings into design revisions.

Validation

SUS moved from strong to best-in-class, climbing from 84.5 to 92. Active users told us why.

We ran the study with six users. Scores came from five participants; one respondent's SUS responses were internally inconsistent and were excluded from the analysis.

Three themes surfaced across regions: translation, conversational use across long sessions, and integration into existing tools.

“

I use it every day. I write 50 or 60 emails a day across three languages. I just write as I have in my mind and E-GPT creates the email with the right words.

Gresia Randazzo

Customer Success Manager, Paris · Equinix

“

I use it every day. I write 50 or 60 emails a day across three languages. I just write as I have in my mind and E-GPT creates the email with the right words.

Gresia Randazzo

Customer Success Manager, Paris · Equinix

Takeaway

The study turned direction into evidence and clarified what to build next.

Validation

SUS moved from strong to best-in-class, climbing from 84.5 to 92. Active users told us why.

We ran the study with six users. Scores came from five participants; one respondent's SUS responses were internally inconsistent and were excluded from the analysis.

Three themes surfaced across regions: translation, conversational use across long sessions, and integration into existing tools.

“

I use it every day. I write 50 or 60 emails a day across three languages. I just write as I have in my mind and E-GPT creates the email with the right words.

Gresia Randazzo

Customer Success Manager, Paris · Equinix

Takeaway

The study turned direction into evidence and clarified what to build next.

Learning

What this taught me.

I was brought on to drive consistency across six pilots. The work that mattered was recognizing that six pilots would never be consistent, no matter how well they were designed individually. The brief is not always the right brief. The first job is deciding whether to accept it.

Learning

What this taught me.

I was brought on to drive consistency across six pilots. The work that mattered was recognizing that six pilots would never be consistent, no matter how well they were designed individually. The brief is not always the right brief. The first job is deciding whether to accept it.

Endorsement

“

I had the privilege of working with Aishwarya on designing our internal GenAI Chatbot applications. She was very quick with her turnaround of design options and provided top-quality work that needed very few changes. The applications were received very well, and her designs were instrumental in driving adoption and garnering user appreciation. She has been a solid team player who made collaborating with her very easy and productive. She also made sure she brought full clarity to the process and through her technical expertise, she ensured we had a solid functional design for the product.

Srivats Ravichandran

Principal Enterprise Architect · Equinix

“

Srivats Ravichandran

Principal Enterprise Architect · Equinix

Work

About

Beyond

Work

About

Beyond

Equinix-GPT

Equinix-GPT

GEN AI

DESIGN SYSTEMS

B2B SAAS

ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE

GEN AI

DESIGN SYSTEMS

B2B SAAS

ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE

Reframed six fragmented AI pilots into a unified company-wide GenAI platform, adopted by 1,800+ employees in week one.

Reframed six fragmented AI pilots into a unified company-wide GenAI platform, adopted by 1,800+ employees in week one.

Role

Lead Designer

Timeline

Jan 2024 - May 2024

Core team

Role

Lead Designer

Timeline

Jan 2024 - May 2024

Core team

← Back

Problem

Reframe

Challenge

Design

Validation

Learning

Endorsement

← Back

Problem

Reframe

Challenge

Design

Validation

Learning

Endorsement

Problem

Six GenAI pilots being built in parallel before design was involved.

Six GenAI pilots being built in parallel before design was involved.

Equinix's Enterprise Architecture team was building six GenAI pilots before I joined. Each was owned by a different business unit and built without design involvement. Each one worked. But employees had to know which pilot did what, open the right one, and adjust to its interface.

Takeaway

Six pilots that worked in isolation. The system between them didn't.

Problem

Six GenAI pilots being built in parallel before design was involved.

Equinix's Enterprise Architecture team was building six GenAI pilots before I joined. Each was owned by a different business unit and built without design involvement. Each one worked. But employees had to know which pilot did what, open the right one, and adjust to its interface.

Takeaway

Six pilots that worked in isolation. The system between them didn't.

Reframe

The brief was to bridge six pilots. The work was to unify them into one.

The brief was to bridge six pilots. The work was to unify them into one.

Takeaway

The pitch landed. Budget and ownership didn't. A decision on an all-employee tool couldn't come from any one of the six business units. It had to come from executive decision-makers leading Equinix's GenAI initiatives, and nothing on the table was moving them.

Sales

HR

Ops

IT

EA

Legal

Reframe

The brief was to bridge six pilots. The work was to unify them into one.

Takeaway

The pitch landed. Budget and ownership didn't. A decision on an all-employee tool couldn't come from any one of the six business units. It had to come from executive decision-makers leading Equinix's GenAI initiatives, and nothing on the table was moving them.

Sales

HR

Ops

IT

EA

Legal

Challenge

The pitch wasn't going to close it. Evidence would.

The pitch wasn't going to close it. Evidence would.

Each of the six business units had reasons to protect its own pilot. Competing priorities, fragmented decision-making, and the lack of centralized direction for an all-employee tool meant that a unified product couldn't be negotiated through meetings alone.