Innovation & Product Design
Empowering users through visual programming
What we were working on
A high performant graphical framework that powers canvas-based low-code environments used to model ETL operations, business processes, decision and event detection logic.
Mission: Modernize the graphical framework to be fast, snappy, and feel like modern software is supposed to. Make new feature development more human and possible again.
What I did
I was lead designer for decisioning and predictive analytics capabilities. We needed to be able to build new functionality into Next Best Action strategies. This was not possible because skills were internally missing, and the code base for the original underlying graphical framework had become unmanageable. I proposed we build one ourselves within our teams. After learning that Product Managers had no more capacity, I stepped up as interim product owner, while simultaneously also designing.
Communication
- Recognized and articulated the impact of an existing issue and raised awareness
- Persuaded executive and senior leadership levels to obtain support and buy-in from
- Collaborated with technical documentation team on updates to documentation
- Evangelized and socialized feature updates with internal teams
- Arranged with the support of my colleague a new way of working to have other projects on the roadmap continue being designed and tested.
Creative & Technical
- Planned epics, refined user stories, communicated vision
- Designed two different layout algorithms for a freeform editing and guided canvas paradigm
- Designed interactions using multi-modal input methods, and ensured accessibility
- Designed additional functionality to fill product gaps and enhance the user experience
- Re-designed visual language for guided canvases (ETL and Event detection)
Leadership/Mentoring
- Identified skills in team members and proposed the formation of a new team
- Assumed additional responsibilities as interim product owner
- Facilitated brainstorming and regular feedback sessions with scrum team
- Demonstrated business use case and a pilot demo (MVP)
- Encouraged junior team members to step up
- Organized team celebrations mid-point and after the release
Management
- Leveraged continuous user feedback by iterating through prototypes and builds
- Considered upgrade processes for existing customers
- Successfully migrated four product areas onto framework and completed each milestone
- Successfully completed merge and upgraded 5000+ existing customers
- Ensured backward compatibility, and that all functionality is existent
- Ensured localization, cross-platform, cross-browser and support of older browser versions in banking environments
Research
- Assessed potential risks, addressed them with stakeholders and accounted for solutions
- Conducted research with internal customers, teams, and customer support
- Identified stakeholder needs, gathered requirements and planned roadmap
Organizational
- Engaged and managed stakeholders, provided continuous updates and communication
- Organized stress test prior to general assembly and passed successfully
Outcome
Process Modeler
Next Best Action Strategy Modeler
Data Flow editor
Real-time event streams editor
On a project level
- Project took a total duration of 14 months start to finish (including migrations of 4 product areas)
- Faster, and snappier experience that is pleasant to use, feels like modern software, and delights users
- Granted a shared patent Connecting graphical shapes using gestures, U.S. Patent US10698599B2, filed June 5, 2017, issued June 30, 2020. Inventors: M. D’Angelo, Bettina Kast, G. Cao, P. Kala, M.R. Nae
On an organizational level
- Smooth upgrade for existing clients
- Unblocked other teams previously not able to develop new features.
- Team developed new skills, that were new to the company
- Removed dependency on licensed graph framework
On an performance level
- Improved performance and scalability from initial 50 objects (old framework) to 500+ objects with the new framework
- A canvas with 200 shapes opens between 10-35 times faster with the new framework
- Faster performance through optimized loading times (between 89% and 97% faster depending on browser vendor)
- Reduction of the lines of code by 70% (down from 102,800 to 30,850 lines) reducing potential for bugs, better security and performance, and ease of maintenance
What others had to say
“Excellent work! It’s always very impressive when a team takes ownership and responsibility for something outside their usual area, and you communicated, collaborated, and delivered flawlessly.“
Karen Zelevinsky, Vice President
“I wanted to recognize the team on their amazing work with implementing the new graphical framework into the process modeler. The results are truly a quantum team in performance and functionality. Not having any experience in this area of the product, they quickly came up to speed and worked well with both PM and Engineering team in US and India. I, myself, was truly impress during my visit with how much they were able to accomplish in such a short time. I look forward to working with them in the future now having such a more robust canvas foundation for process modeling and case design. All early feedback from the field has been extremely positive. “
Drew Piekarski, Sr. Product Manager
“I love the new framework! It feels so nice working now in process modeler. Such an improvement. It’s worlds apart from what it used to be.“
E. Özer-Gülyaz, Solutions Consultant
“I’ve been impressed by this work from the earliest prototypes and it was great to see it all come together.“
Adam Kenney, Sr. Director
“Congratulations Bettina for driving these efforts ! Numbers look pretty good.“
Ionut Rusu, Sr. Product Manager