Project Description

I was the lead UX designer responsible for multiple UX overhauls of Lumen's sales quoting tools. First, I helped to transform a slow, complex Salesforce-based enterprise sales tool into a modern, sales-led quoting platform. By prioritizing a service-first workflow, fighting for product simplicity, and leveraging design systems (Lumen Chi/Salesforce Lightning), the project cut internal quoting time by 70%. This 'North Star' vision led to a 0 -> 1 self-serve digital marketplace that successfully positioned Lumen as a digital-first provider, competing with cloud giants and driving Network-as-a-Service adoption with 1,000+ customers by 2025.

Key Features

• Service-First User Flow: The sales quoting user experience was flipped from a backwards, location-based process to a service-oriented configuration, mirroring the logical steps that both sales reps and customers follow when purchasing.

• Intelligent Product Simplification: Products like Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) were simplified by defaulting to the "most of the time" use case, exposing only essential attributes and tucking edge-case features into advanced options to protect usability.

• Major Performance Enhancements: A major effort was made to eliminate the notorious loading spinner (nicknamed "Simon" because it was on-screen so often). A joint effort between UX and development led to refactoring and using asynchronous backend calls made the digital system feel quick and highly responsive, improving the actual and perceived speed of the experience.

• All-Digital Self-Service: The Lumen Marketplace platform allows customers to browse, configure, price, and purchase enterprise networking services directly, removing the need for a traditional, lengthy sales cycle.

• Plain Language Design: The user experience was built on the principle of using plain customer language, actively avoiding "telco-speak," industry jargon, and confusing acronyms to achieve a consumer-grade buying flow.

• Seamless Dual Design System Integration: The project unified the external customer buy flows (Lumen Chi design system) with the internal quoting tool (Salesforce Lightning design system) to create a consistent, seamless experience across both platforms.

Technologies Used

• Design & Prototyping: Adobe XD & UXPin

• Design Systems: Salesforce Lightning (Internal Design System) & Lumen Chi (Customer-Facing Design System)

• Usability Testing & User Research: UserTesting.com

• Development & Project Management: Jira, Confluence, Salesforce, SAFe Agile/Scrum

Project Highlights

• 70% Faster Time-to-Task: The initial internal redesign of the Digital Quoting tool resulted in a 70% reduction in the time-to-task for the enterprise sales team.

• Digital Transformation Proof Point: The Marketplace became a tangible flagship of Lumen’s digital-first strategy, positioning the company to compete with digital-native providers like AWS and Azure.

• 1,000+ NaaS Customers: By 2025, the platform was publicly reported to be powering over 1,000 Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) customers, validating the platform’s business and adoption success at scale.

• Strong Stakeholder Alignment: Using visual, click-through prototypes transformed "boring diagrams, data, and spreadsheets" into a clear North Star vision that secured instant, crucial stakeholder alignment.

• Conclusion - Enduring Design Vision: The launched Marketplace buy flows maintained a high degree of fidelity to the original mockups years later, indicating a strong, resilient design vision that guided the platform's ongoing evolution.