Alteryx Cloud Designer

My Role 

UX Designer

  • Research
  • User Testing
  • Wireframes
  • Visual Design
  • Prototyping
  • Implementation Audit

Full-stack engineering team:

  • 2 Back-end Devs
  • 3 Front-end Devs
  • 1 Product Manager

2016 – 2017: 8 Months

Challenge

Remove OS dependency. Design a next-gen, cloud-based product accessible for less experienced analysts.

Screenshot of the Windows based product
Application Designs
Released Cloud App

Goals

  • Make a product that is platform agnostic
  • Revisit all design paradigms and try to simplify interactions
  • Combine tools where possible
  • Utilize the same engine to execute workflows
  • Backwards compatible

Problems to Solve

  • New users find the amount of available tools overwhelming 
  • Users don’t know where to start
  • Limited interactions with data preview (select, sort, filter, profile)
  • Instant feedback of data preview while configuring tools
  • Restrictions due to legacy code 
  • Product is only available on Windows

Process Summary

  • Discovery
    • Discuss vision and direction with product manager 
    • Research & identify persona we wanted to target
    • Heuristic evaluation of existing product and tools
    • Gather and review feedback from customers
  • Ideation
    • Sketch ideas on paper
    • Wireframes, reviews, design iterations
  • Validation
    • User testing with internal teams
    • Initial development implementation
    • UX Audit and refinement of implementation
    • User testing with select customers

Sketches

Design Explorations

User Testing

Several rounds of user testing leveraging took place within our office, remotely, and even at annual conventions hosted by Alteryx.

  • Remote Unmoderated
  • Moderated
  • Group Panel
  • Surveys
  • Beta Testing
User Test Plan
Open Prototype

Result

In eight months we were able to quickly develop a functional product with ten of the most commonly used tools to start. The feedback we received from internal stakeholders and customers was overwhelmingly positive, particularly with the updated tool interactions.

People loved the simplifying of some of the most difficult tools and the instant feedback of the data preview while configuring without having to run a workflow.  They were also pleased with the ability to perform common interactions directly with the data preview.

Cloud Designer ended up launching two years after I left the company. Many of the concepts and interactions I had designed released in the final product.

Things Learned

I would ask for clearer objectives and requirements on what buy in from the executive leadership needed. We missed an opportunity to know exactly what stakeholders viewed as critical to success.

We had good goals, but there were missing crucial requirements from internal stakeholders that ended up with a gap that was too wide cross. 

While I do enjoy being able to design something with a “blue sky” approach, it would have been better to design with a laser focus if we knew definitively what we were trying to achieve.  

Features Summary

  • Implemented ten of the most frequently used tools
  • Instant data preview update with no workflow run required
  • Many new interactions directly with data preview
  • Remove, Sort, Profile, Rename, Reorder within data preview
  • Integrated functionality to combine several tools
  • Auto data typing
  • Keyboard accessibility mode and workflow creation
  • Streamlined data input tool and credential management