Renuka Kulkarni

OUTCOMES

The redesigned Check Network Status became one of Verizon's highest-performing support pages — valued for its simplicity, relevance, and ability to resolve real-world problems without requiring a call to support.

~1.2 M

Monthly users

$1.7M

Annual cost saved

3

Iterations tested

15M+

Fios customers served

OVERVIEW

Check Network Status is one of Verizon's most-visited support pages — a tool that lets customers enter an address and instantly understand network conditions at their location. But despite its popularity, a critical segment of customers was completely left out: Fios Home Internet users.

This project was about closing that gap, and doing it in a way that didn't add complexity for anyone.

My Role: Lead Experience Designer — I owned the end-to-end experience from research planning through final handoff. I worked across Network Operations, Engineering, and Research — and had to navigate a key constraint: the backend was architected around service type, meaning any solution that hid that selector from users required a non-trivial engineering approach.

THE PROBLEM

More than 15 million Fios customers were excluded from Verizon's check network status experience.

The existing flow required users to identify and select their service type before they could check for outages. While this approach aligned with Verizon's internal network architecture, it did not align with how customers thought about their internet service.

Research revealed that many users were unsure of the differences between:

Fios Home Internet
5G Home Internet
LTE Home Internet

Instead of helping customers quickly understand whether there was an outage, the experience introduced unnecessary cognitive effort at the exact moment users were already frustrated.

RESEARCH & ITERATION

We ran multiple rounds of usability testing to identify where and why users were dropping off. The findings pointed clearly to the service selector as the single biggest friction point.

Three approaches were explored:

Existing

Upfront Selection

Users had to choose their service type at the start. Most couldn't answer confidently. Many abandoned the flow entirely.

V1 • Tabs

Tab Structure (Mobile / Home)

Following Verizon's standard support page pattern. The "Home Internet" tab was often overlooked because users defaulted to the preselected "Mobile" option.

V2 • Dynamic

Show only what's relevant

Surface the Home Internet sub-type only in Fios-available areas. Fewer decisions, better completion — users preferred it.

Show Home Internet sub-type only in Fios available areas. Fewer decisions, better completion. Users preferred this.

We conducted multiple rounds of research to understand the usability issues in the existing Check network status page and further tested the new iterations.

"Fios is for home, so why are they asking me to compare it with 5G & LTE"

"5G is the fastest one. I'm not sure what Fios is"

"I didn't know which to pick, so I just gave up."

"It gave an estimated restoration time. That was helpful."

Key Insight

The service selector step was the single biggest drop-off point. Removing the decision - not just simplifying it was the right call.

FINAL DESIGN

Check Network Status - Fios Home flow

COLLABORATION

What partners said.

"We couldn't have completed this significant launch of CNS Mobile / Home / Fios without her. She's incredibly thorough — often thinking of use cases and potential impacts before anyone else. She pushed us all to spend time on user testing and let the results inform her UX decisions."

Michael Mazzeo

Senior Manager, Experience Team — Verizon

"Renuka did an amazing job on Check Network Status. It was a heavy lift for UX design. She provided great support throughout. Glad to have her on our team.

Ajith Puppala

Dev Lead, PCT-55 & CNS Maps — Verizon