Design Philosophy at Hevo
As the sole member of the Design team at Hevo for several years, I have witnessed the evolution of the Product and played a pivotal role in the way it is portrayed to the world. From using basic templates for our Product to now having a full-fledged Design Philosophy and coherent thought behind everything we put out, we have gone through a journey of discovering and refining our vision. Along the way, there are many things I have learned and certain tenets that we at Hevo hold central to our design philosophy.
1. Simplicity
Even before I began designing the User Interface for our Product, I was on a mission to clarify its primary purpose. After going through other SaaS Products and understanding more about the B2B Space, the conclusion was that our goal for Hevo would be Simplicity. Hevo is a Data Integration tool that incorporates many technical aspects, but our primary aim was to keep the way users interact with it very simple and intuitive. Even a user without much technical knowledge should understand the Product, Create Pipelines, and Interact with it fruitfully.
2. Data-Centric Design
One of the central tenets of Hevo’s culture is the Data-driven approach to everything. Our product deals with data, and even internally, no matter which team one is a part of, the work done always follows a remarkably Analytical and Data-oriented approach. With this very idea in mind, the logo for the company was conceived ~ an inflow of data, symbolized by smaller dots, moving towards a Data Warehouse, which is shown by a larger dot in the middle. The influx of data is indicated by various colors, as the data that flows through our Data Pipelines often comes from a variety of sources.
As a Product that emphasizes data, we wanted to keep our User Interface reflective of the same ideology by using a black and white color scheme. Portraying the notion that data is of prime importance to us was crucial. We wanted the UI and Colour Scheme to exemplify this focus by keeping it simple and straightforward. All other color schemes arose from this initial motivation and have remained consistent.
3. Consistency
Once an organization reaches a particular size, it’s often challenging to keep the Design Concepts consistent across all its communications ~ be it feature additions to the Software, Event Updates, or other Promotional Materials. Nonetheless, being in line with our internal structure’s Cohesive and In-tune nature, we have maintained a similar consistency with every design we have. A very in-depth Brand Guideline, which talks about everything starting from acceptable font sizes to the seven background colors our logo is always against, forms the backbone of the Design Team. Every Hevoite likes to work in a very organized manner, which reflects in our designs.
4. High Standard
When one keeps a high standard for their work, it always reflects in all facets of their life. At Hevo, Good Design takes extremely high precedence, to the extent that even all Internal Software and Functions are always impeccably designed, no matter how insignificant they may seem. This is consistent everywhere, from Internal Analytics Dashboards to Virtual Birthday Cards. Since the beginning, this practice has been followed and lays a foundation for design or otherwise within work at Hevo.
5. Customer-Centric
At Hevo, the Customer is at the center of all our activities. Feature updates are decided based on Customer needs, and Support works relentlessly to provide them with the needed guidance. The Design Team also works in the same way. At first, it was difficult for me to get insights from our Customers related to our UI on if it was intuitive & comfortable and what changes they would like to see. This is why we started rolling out NPS Surveys for feedback and later employed FullStory for Digital Analytics. This helped us understand customers’ pain points in the UI and enabled us to work and improve on them.
By building the Design Team at Hevo, I have genuinely been able to understand how the ethos and vision of a company can be expressed through its Designs. Having a solid Design Philosophy is essential for Brand Recognition/Aesthetics, Customer Satisfaction, and Employee Experience. In addition, a cohesive and robust Design Viewpoint can convey the company’s perspective, which is something I believe, Design at Hevo has accomplished.
