Vendia Platform

Background

Vendia Share is the heart of Vendia, letting companies share data securely with partners in real-time. With it, organizations can collaborate effortlessly, enhancing communication and decision-making across distributed teams. By offering a solid and reliable infrastructure, Vendia Share helps businesses unlock the full potential of their data, sparking innovation and accelerating growth in today’s fast-paced marketplace.

Task

In my role, I worked closely with the CEO, CPO, Product Managers, and VP of Engineering to shape strategic roadmaps, project requirements, timelines, and phased rollout plans for Vendia. I mentored designers and product managers on UX research, ensuring frequent data collection to inform decisions. Managing a team of designers, I oversaw the creation and iteration of UX, UI, and visual design elements. When needed, I also contributed individually to ensure project success and alignment with company goals.

Tackling Challenges at Vendia

When I joined Vendia, I faced several major hurdles affecting the product’s usability and effectiveness:

• UI Fragmentation: The interface was disjointed, with features added randomly, causing user confusion.
• Technical Barriers: The product required coding knowledge for onboarding and usage, alienating non-technical users.
• Accessibility Issues: The brand colors were not accessible, excluding users with visual impairments and compromising inclusivity.
• Component Library Overhead: The existing front-end library was bulky, affecting performance and maintainability, necessitating a switch to a lighter alternative.

Research and Usability

• Baseline Usability Studies: Developers found GraphQL challenging, taking over 15 minutes to understand the product.
• Stakeholder Interviews: Identified the long time-to-value as a major pain point.

Improving User Experience

• Information Architecture (IA): Developed a logical IA grounded in user research and engineering insights.
• Navigation Design: Crafted intuitive navigation to streamline user journeys.

Strengthening Design Foundations

• Design Components & Guidelines: Developed foundational design components and guidelines.
• Future-Proofing: Ensured the design system was robust and adaptable for future updates.

Elevating Usability and Visual Consistency

• Page Redesign: Improved usability and aligned pages with the updated IA.
• Visual Enhancements: Boosted visual appeal while maintaining consistency.

Rolling Out Exciting New Features

• Smart Contracts: Introduced a simplified interface for event-triggered automation.
• Entity Explorer: Created a no-code interface for data manipulation, enhancing user control and flexibility.

Polishing the Details

Our developers integrated components from our design system into screen designs for the GA launch. My team then conducted a two-month review to ensure consistency and quality across all components. We worked closely with the engineering team to align design and terminology, achieving perfect harmony between our design system and their implementation.

A Fresh Look and New Features

In August 2022, we unveiled our new branding. My product design team quickly updated all existing designs to match the new visual style, focusing on CSS tweaks to keep product launches on track. Thanks to our February design system work, developers implemented these changes within 48 hours.

The launch featured three major additions: Vendia Organizations, Role-Based Permissions, and Metrics, boosting security and governance for our enterprise customers. We also made several UX improvements based on user feedback and designed new components to support these features.

Empowering the marketing team

My team transitioned to support the MarTech team by updating the website and blog. During this endeavor, they:

• Developed design elements for creating new pages using our templates.
• Delivered comprehensive templates at component, row, and page levels.
• Provided “grab-and-go” graphics for quick, professional page creation.
• Ensured consistency and ease of use across all design elements.
• Collaborated closely with the visual design team to maintain cohesive branding.
• Streamlined the content creation process, enabling the marketing team to efficiently produce high-quality, visually appealing web content.

User Research Insights

• CSV Challenges: Users faced difficulties with CSV file usage and manual schema creation.
• Demand for Integration: There was a strong demand for seamless CSV integration.
• Terminology Clarification: Needed to clarify confusing terms.

Updated Personas and User Journeys

• Primary Persona: Business Administrators, focusing on usability for non-coders.
• Secondary Persona: Data Analysts and Workers, catering to both coding and no-code preferences.
• Tertiary Persona: Developers, now with less emphasis than before.

Enhanced Information Architecture (IA)

My team revamped the information architecture by introducing three new no-code features:

• Easy Onboarding: A more intuitive experience for non-technical users with simple CSV uploads.
• Lineage: Enhanced data traceability, allowing users to see their data’s history.
• Data Upload: Simplified upload process with a no-code interface.

Ensuring Strategic Alignment

My team created detailed user flows and reviewed them with leadership and the customer success team to ensure they aligned with our strategic goals.

Prototyping for Success

My team developed a series of wireframes and low-fidelity prototypes to showcase the user experience. These were iteratively refined based on user interviews and leadership reviews, leading to positive feedback and heightened excitement.

High-Fidelity Designs and Enhanced Reusability

My team developed high-fidelity designs of the final experience, adding over 100 modular components to our design system for greater reusability. These designs empowered our marketing team to effectively showcase our product UI on our website and social channels, ensuring a cohesive and impactful presentation.

Empowering Customers with Insights

The consumption dashboard was a game-changer for customers using a credit-based system, offering deep insights into usage patterns and spending. It enabled tracking of key metrics like top users, high-cost data expenditures, configuration inefficiencies, and strategic opportunities for cost optimization and investment diversification. This tool not only supported informed decision-making but also empowered customers to proactively manage their resources and maximize platform value.

This project was driven by an intern and involved extensive cross-team collaboration.

Steering Towards New Opportunities

Our board of directors directed us to explore a product pivot to boost sales opportunities. Our CPO tasked me with brainstorming strategies, leveraging my two years of product familiarity and the newness of the product team.

The February website redesign revealed gaps between our marketed capabilities and the platform’s actual presentation. Vendia was designed for custom applications, which didn’t align with customer preferences and market demands.

Additionally, our leadership aimed to integrate GenAI to enhance product sophistication.

Identifying Key Opportunities for Growth

Conducting a deep dive into our gaps, I identified several key opportunities:

• Entity Resolution & Segmentation: Integrating machine learning and manual methods, along with a GenAI-powered conversational interface, could address major shortcomings.
• Embedded Experience: Recognizing users’ preference to stay within their primary work applications, embedding Vendia into these systems emerged as an ideal solution.

To align stakeholders and secure development approval, I authored a comprehensive proposal outlining these features and presented it to the CPO and CEO.

Showcasing Innovation

Following approval, my team created a concept demo for a Vendia LLM experience integrated into Salesforce, demonstrating real-time querying of the Vendia golden record. This demo was instrumental in gaining endorsement from the C-Suite and later the board of directors, validating our strategic direction and innovation efforts.

Compiling Key Insights

I meticulously compiled all research findings, customer feedback, issues, requests, and internal stakeholder insights. Through analysis, I discovered several critical insights:

• Even highly technical engineers preferred our no-code experiences, valuing speed, accuracy, and security.
• Marketing’s key product highlights were difficult to demonstrate due to the developer-centric UI.
• There was a clear demand for whitelabeling options and default permission experiences.
• A diverse array of non-technical personas showed interest in our product, if presented in a more user-friendly manner.

Optimizing User Experience

Drawing from these insights, we compiled a comprehensive list of jobs to be done tailored to each persona group. We systematically deconstructed every feature, flow, and concept within Vendia, then meticulously reassembled them to optimize user experiences. Through rigorous flow comparison, I identified overlaps and unique elements to unify and enhance the overall user experience, ensuring seamless alignment across features, sales strategies, and personas.

Enhancing Visual Consistency

Capitalizing on a recent branding update, I thoroughly revised the visual design (CSS) and component design to reflect our evolving strategic direction. This ensured consistency and visual appeal throughout the platform.

Transformative Infrastructure Overhaul

This process led to a significant rethinking of Vendia’s core infrastructure, resulting in a substantial API change with profound impacts on user experience and our sales onboarding cycle. After presenting and demonstrating the benefits, I secured approval from both the CEO, who initially conceptualized the idea, and the engineering team responsible for implementation.