My Role
Responsibilities
I was the lead product designer working with another product designer focusing on the product portion of the project. I was responsible for UX auditing, UX/UI design, project management, and building a design system.
Collaboration
Worked closely with the brand team as well as the stakeholders from Ikigai Labs and their dev team.
Before Screens
The Project
Challenge
Ikigai approached my team to create a personalized experience to help their users leave Excel, by empowering them to build and automate the most complex internal processes with just their spreadsheet skills.
Outcome
Our designs played a crucial role in Ikigai’s success and their client’s success, resulting in their clients adding $25M+ to their bottom line on average. On top of that, Ikigai’s clients have observed a 20% improvement in forecasting accuracy and a 70% decrease in the time it takes to analyze data.
How We Made It Happen
Throughout the project, we were focused on designing screens that would make power Excel users feel right at home. We collaborated with the Ikigai team and worked through multiple iterations to reach our final goal, which was to create a frictionless and intuitive user experience.
We worked very closely with the Ikigai team to gain an in-depth understanding of how the product works, as well as put ourselves in the users shoes to understand their pain points and struggles.
Out of the 5 week engagement, we spent the first few days meeting with the Ikigai team to understand the business goals, constraints, and user needs. We spent a day walking through the entire application and interacting with it so we could become deeply familiar with it.
Wireframe provided by the client.
Organized Chaos
Over the first 1.5-week period, we delved into the exploration of product thinking and updated UI treatment.
Throughout this phase, we closely collaborated with the brand team, ensuring adherence to the new brand guidelines, so that we maintain brand integrity while innovating within these parameters.
First Iteration
Second Iteration
Third Iteration
Home Screen
The main problem on the current home screen is that it was lacking clarity, visibility, and felt quite stark. We needed to help users feel more engaged, so we solved this by adding familiar brand elements, a high-level overview of each project, and improved hierarchy.
Flow Screen
The main problem with the current version is ease of use. There’s a major learning curve, and not enough guidance on how to build flows. We solved this by making inputs and outputs be more accessible, as well as providing guidance in the empty state.
Peak View
Most users were used to creating these flows in Excel (painfully), so we needed to build a solution that makes them feel right at home. With peak view, users are able to upload and manipulate data as if they were using Excel, and providing them with the same functionality, such as being able to use formulas, build charts, etc.
Dashboard
Once flows have been created, users need an intuitive way of creating dashboards to analyze the data. The current platform doesn’t allow users to build dashboards using any flow. They’re ony able to create it from the flow screen and click back and forth to view the data. We solved this problem by allowing users to create a dashboard using any flow, all from one single location.
Design System & Components
As the project was coming to a close, we focused a couple days on cleaning up the file, creating a design system, and ensuring that all interactions have been accounted for to support the engineers as much as possible.
Impact
$25m+
Added to clients bottom line on average
70%
Decrease in the time it takes to analyze data
20%
Increase in forecasting accuracy
