Overview
For 4 months beginning in the Fall of 2018, I worked with a product squad of data and software engineers to improve the experience for ingesting and transforming data in the Civis Platform. Our squad was autonomous and without a product manager so I led research and design on the project in addition to sharing product responsibilities with my tech lead. All of my design decisions were made in tandem with the product and technical support of my team members. That said, I was the sole designer for this project and unless otherwise stated, the work and thoughts displayed here are my own.
The Process
Much technical scoping and early stage Discovery work had been done prior to my involvement meaning most of the product research I did was evaluative in nature and designed to validate and clarify initial hypotheses.
Part 1: Validation
This project involved a shift in the way our users approached their imports — we were moving from static loads to real-time data ingestion; once an import was set-up, it would run indefinitely. To assess initial reactions to the new paradigm, I conducted a remote workshop with a set of internal stakeholders using broad user stories and concepts.
The workshop, additional secondary research, competitive analysis, and a round of think-aloud testing with similar products helped to refine the goals for the project.
Part 2: Rearchitecting
Part 3: Configuring New Imports
My main challenge was to design small pieces of UI that matched existing design patterns and played nicely with other parts of Platform.
