Alation Feature redesign

Redesigning Compose

Role: Lead Product Designer
Other teams: Engineering; Product Management
Timeline: 2021 – 2023

Summary

Compose is Alation’s SQL tool that allows data analysts to validate, document, and share queries and data.

I led a user-focused redesign effort of Compose in order to realign our North Star strategy, better match our offering to our personas’ user journeys, increase engagement and reduce risk of license churn.

The redesigned Compose with a preview panel experience. — The old Compose → the redesigned panel experience.

The old Compose results view, dense and nondirectional. — The old Compose → the redesigned panel experience.

Research

Developing the Compose Roadmap

To understand Compose’s current state and define core user problems, I conducted a series of 5 main research initiatives:

Customer surveys
Customer interviews and usability sessions
External non-Alation SQL user interviews
Competitive and industry analysis
Internal stakeholder feedback and brainstorm sessions

An affinity map of competitor research, grouped into clusters of sticky notes. — Affinity Mapping feedback sessions from customers and competitor research.

A Miro brainstorming board worked through with the team. — Brainstorming with the Alation product team after synthesizing findings.

The Compose UX roadmap, mapping what the analyst is doing, thinking and feeling across the flow. — The resulting Compose UX roadmap and user journey.

Core problems

Compose didn’t feel streamlined

Outdated and hastily made features, plus a lack of visual direction, resulted in an overall disjointed experience.
A lack of “completeness”

Composers felt as if we hadn’t given them all the tools to finish their work — there was a lack of completeness in their daily workflow.
Customers didn’t feel heard

Approaching individual enhancement requests rather than the underlying issues resulted in massive under-delivery.

Compose’s North Star

Compose is used for quick and streamlined data verification and query runs. We want to provide a comprehensive experience that is tailored to being as efficient as our Composers.

Key decisions

Improving core flow & panel UX

Dynamic Panel Layouts

Composers wanted a better way to utilize their screen’s real estate across large and small screens. Outside of standard screen responsiveness, I let Composers choose which layout orientation best suited their needs.

Vertical and horizontal panel layout orientations in Compose.

Toolbar Simplification

The old toolbar was nondirectional and a victim of feature bloat. I cleaned it up using card-sorting exercises and streamlined the section around the core journey.

The redesigned, simplified Compose toolbars.

Object Preview, as a Panel

Composers wanted more features available via panels so they could use their screen real estate more effectively. I reworked the old Preview into a panel experience, which eventually scaled to other products at Alation.

The Compose preview and panels in action, resizing and rearranging.

A Sense of Home: Query Management

Composers voiced that they “wanted to stay in Compose”. To give them a sense of home, we needed a clear starting point for their work — so I designed a query management home for picking up where they left off.