Designing for emerging data infrastructures
The pandemic has disrupted where the confidence is put in the organizations and that is not the innovation in the same way we used to see it happening before 2020. The focus has shifted to data-based growth which can be observed in growing numbers of SaaS, Business Intelligence, Data Analytics products that help to achieve that internal growth and expansion based on a solid foundation.
SaaS is becoming a best friend to remote and disparate teams that need solutions that will help them to optimize their business processes and ensure there are no bottlenecks by working remotely. In fact, if we take a closer look at the Forbes’ Cloud 100 list, we can see that capital is flowing into shares of SaaS, databases, automation tools, and fintech companies.
The need for real-time data has tremendously evolved this year and will continue to do so in 2021. We have seen since the pandemic arrived, that the needs for real-time and accurate updates are critical in developing proper strategies to respond in such unfortunate situations–Sandra Durcevic, Datapine
As a Product Designer, I would like to know what I can work on that will correspond to the changing landscape and how can I bring the most impact? Who owns the data and is able to drive insights from it will definitely have the power to bring an impact on the business, economies, and ecosystems around us.
Will the main users of SaaS be developers or business stakeholders who actually don’t have an engineering background? How to accommodate experiences to two varied in background type of users?
There might be two sides to these products, the front-facing main stakeholders of the organizations such as business managers and the ones that are being used by the developers.
I talked to 2 designers from the SaaS space: Fivetran, MakeLeaps, and 1 from a Quantum Computing company called IonQ who were amazingly helpful to answer my questions that hopefully will inspire and equip designers with the knowledge to start working on the products shaping the world governed by data. I asked them about how they got into this field, what are the required skills to get into this field, and what they think are the biggest challenges in the space?
I need to mention that the article by Andreessen Horowitz made it very clear that the big world of data infrastructures is just taking off and it won’t stop and designers should get ready for the next wave of applications.
How designers can get prepared for designing for emerging data infrastructure? Let’s do it step by step
1. What type of products is falling into the emerging data infrastructure? And what are their characteristics? (the division you see below, on these family of blueprints, comes from the Andreessen Horowitz article)
Cloud-native Modern business intelligence see more:
- Connectors, Data modeling
- Cloud data warehouse
- Dashboards, Embedded analytics, Augmented analytics
Data processing see more:
- Ingestion and transformation of data(Connectors, Data modeling, Workflow manager)
- Data lakes, Cloud data warehouse, Data science platform, Data Science and ML Libraries,
- Dashboards, Embedded analytics, Augmented analytics
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning see more:
- Data transformation
- Model training and development
- Model inference
2. What are the main challenges for the businesses developing products of the emerging data infrastructure?
- Time, costs, and technical difficulties of integration/plugging into the existing database, software, resources of the customer
- Educating the users before onboarding and after
- Security and compliance
- End-user support
- Scaleability and being production-ready
- Data governance
- Releasing updates to the system
- Increasing use of AI
- Brand awareness
- Building for stakeholders with different permissions
3. Who are the main users of these types of products?
- Developers (Designing for developers by Arin Bhowmick)
- Data Scientists (Partnering user experience designers with data scientists by Matthew McClendon)
- Organization employees (e.g. Product teams)
- Business stakeholders
4. What are the main challenges facing User Experience Designers?
Integration/ switching to a new solution
Guided features for first-time users, not distracting the power users
Building empowering systems for self-service analytics
What our interviewed designers think are the biggest challenges?
Breaking down complex problems and communicating them to different types of stakeholders. Often there will be a lot of people invested in a project who have different backgrounds and skill sets, and finding the best way to communicate, coordinate, and delegate has been the biggest challenge. Trying to accomplish too much too soon, or trying to work siloed from others is always a tempting proposition when you’re full of ambition, but it often doesn’t create the outcomes you imagine — Omar Younis, Lead Product Designer at Fivetran
Common challenges include data governance. Giving people the tools to effectively manage access to their data within their organization. Especially at large enterprise clients, this can be a complicated task. Looking at data visualization design, another common challenge is understanding that data vis is a way of story telling, so really thinking about what it is that you’re trying to communicate, what is it that your users care about and what is the best way to visualize that — Lehel Babos, Design Lead at MakeLeaps
5. You might be asking yourself how could a designer possibly start a career in Saas?
I was a senior IC most of my career and became interested in working at fast-growing companies so I could learn how to deliver good UX at scale. Those opportunities happened to spring up at product companies that deliver B2B saas products that relied on rich data. I was fortunate that my professional interest and the job market seemed to line up at the same time — Omar Younis
I decided to take my career and focus more on B2B tools while I was still freelancing and working with startups in the Toronto community, since I found the work and the problems there more interesting. One of the tools I worked on dealt with helping folks in the architecture, development and construction industry search and use building regulations and codes. This background made me a good fit for a position at IBM at the time, where I then got involved with analytics and data visualization software design much more heavily — Lehel Babos
6. How to obtain the needed skills in order to prepare yourself for working in the SaaS space?
Practice pitching your ideas by drawing from real customer feedback. Make that part of the way you communicate about your work. If you do that, then people aren’t worried as much about deliverables, they are going on the ride with you to solve some customer problem. Also learn good working habits like stepping away from your computer and clearing your mind through exercise or meditation. That has the tendency to let go of your previously tightly held opinions, and look at problems in a new and often better light — Omar Younis
For data vis specifically, the Interaction Design Foundation has some pretty good courses on visual design and data visualization, which could be a good starting point. Getting familiar with Design Thinking practices and becoming really customer outcome focused will also set you up for success. IBM has recently made their basic design thinking course free to the general public, which I think is another great resource. Beyond that, I think the advice is the same as for any other design role. Don’t neglect your soft skills. Being a strong communicator, an effective negotiator, being able to take criticism, being a strong collaborator are all skills that are ultimately just as important to your success as knowing how to use Sketch or D3 — Lehel Babos
The technical skills thing is really less about being able to code and more about knowing quite deeply how computers work — most consumer products are so abstracted away from the reality of computation that it’s basically an invisible commodity: code goes in cloud, does whatever. Because most of the tools I build are for technical people who are trying to understand how a piece of technology is (or isn’t) working. A queueing system in the cloud, a motor in a physical device, etc
If their work history didn’t show something that communicated some of that understanding (work in cloud compute, other hardware, or adjacent things like complex industrials or manufacturing) I would probably just assess it conversationally. “How comfortable are you with low level technical stuff like computation? How willing are you to learn?” And then maybe probe some examples
But there are adjacent skills and ways to probe that too — systems thinking, comfort with math and formal logic
“What was the last thing you learned deeply, how do you learn new things” etc — Coleman Collins, Product Designer at IonQ
Resources to learn the skills
Skill: Designing for complex technology
–> Make sure to download the cheatsheet included in the description of the video
Skill: Information Visualization
Skill: Systems thinking
Skill: Logic thinking
Skill: Data governance
Skill: Documenting design process
https://www.immagic.com/eLibrary/ARCHIVES/GENERAL/UXPIN_PL/U141013B.pdf
Skills: Testing with lots of data
Skill: Designing with existing design systems
Skill: User reseach in complex systems
And one advice to learn the skills in one of the FB groups:
Don’t hesitate to get in touch via email, or👇
Disclaimer: These are the projects that I do independently in my free time out of my passion to the innovation and strategy and they are not connected to any organization and I am not collaborating with any company related to my research.
