Led design and research increasing usability by 150%
TL;DR
Conducted 6 in-depth user studies, leading end-to-end research efforts, including scripting, task creation, facilitation, documentation, and presentation of actionable insights and recommendations.
Redesigned the core platform navigation
Contributed to the design system creation and coverage
Improved platform usability score from 34 to 85 (SUS) by incorporating research-driven design iterations.
Designed and tested an AI Intelligence/Insight feature that was very well received by users
On The Edge
How I designed innovative features and brilliant basics
Situation
When I arrived, Edge delta's complex and powerful observability and telemetry pipeline product was still largely designed by engineers. With a small design team, including myself, our design director, and a part time designer, we had a lot of work to do to get it up to the same level as competitors.
Task
My first task was to start doing research, as no usability testing had ever been done. This was crucial for several reasons, including benchmarking the existing experience so we could track the impact of our design efforts over time.
As part of my research efforts, I was looking for opportunities for us to launch innovative new features that would enhance our Product Market Fit, as well as increase the usability of the product in order to reduce churn of existing customers like
Box and Snowflake.
Action
Here’s how I tackled these tasks:
Performed user testing studies – These user studies quickly showed that the usability of the product was extremely poor, with a SUS score at 34, providing us with a lot of room to make improvements.
Now that we knew what we were up against, we started working on implementing a new design system that would increase the usability and a new navigation architecture that would help users easily navigate through the product
I also designed and tested a new AI Intelligence/Insight feature that users responded very favorably too, causing our CTO to remark: "This is the future of our company".
Result
The impact was significant:
🎛️ Brand new, bespoke design system implemented with 96% coverage
🔍 Fully reworked information architecture, including Search and navigation features shipped
📈 150% improvement in usability (34-85)
💡 Brand new Insights feature designed and tested (implementation in progress) with one user stating:
"I like the insights page a lot… getting insights front and center is what I care about and what I would pay for." Saran - Staff AI Engineer at Dataminr
Tyler Burkhardt - Staff Front End Software Developer
I had the pleasure of working with Lance on a number of features during our time together at Edge Delta. His ability to collaborate across teams while also conducting user testing ensures that what we ship to our customers will check all of the boxes. As an engineer, I appreciated Lance's desire to make sure that the designs he hands off to you are feasible and will not have a negative impact on the maintainability of our codebase. I would highly recommend Lance. He takes ambiguous product requirements, and turns them into beautiful prototypes that are easy to implement. Whatever state your application is currently in, Lance will take it to the next level.
