Data stories.

Background

The platform helps enterprise clients work with complex business data at scale. Users needed a structured way to navigate the product and extract the insights most relevant to their business questions, and the existing experience wasn’t delivering that.

An early layout for a full redesign had been mapped out based on intuition and prior context, without design or user involvement. Development was about to begin.

The challenge

The proposed direction was conceptually reasonable, but it hadn’t yet been tested against real user behaviour. Moving into build without that validation carried a real business risk: engineering investment in a structure that might not match how users actually work.

My instinct for quality and my habit of anticipating downstream consequences told me we needed evidence before we committed.

Creating space for research

I raised the concern, framing it as a process and risk conversation rather than a design opinion: shipping without user validation is the most expensive kind of bet a team can make. Product Leadership had a different read on the urgency, and we didn’t immediately align.

Rather than letting the disagreement stall the work or turn personal, I brought it into the open through the right channels, so the decision could be made transparently and collaboratively. When you lead without authority, escalation isn’t conflict. It’s making sure the right people are part of the decision, calmly and through the right channels.

We secured a short window for user research.

Research and Discovery

In parallel with opening that window, I built a prototype grounded in existing research insights so we wouldn’t lose time once interviews began. Structure and forward planning are how I protect timelines when scope is uncertain.

We ran six user interviews, internal and external, using holistic views and observational sessions.

The research surfaced how users actually needed to navigate and structure their work. The original flat layout didn’t match their mental model. My prototype, with a clearer hierarchy, guided navigation, and more relevant framing, matched it closely and became the basis for the shipped design.

Results

• Most visited page in the product since launch
• 2.4× user growth in year one
• Over 60% penetration of active users sustained throughout year one, an unusually strong adoption signal
• Consistent month-over-month growth with notable mid-year acceleration
• Still live, still the primary navigation backbone, and actively being scaled with additional pages following the same pattern

Reflection

The hardest part of cross-functional work isn’t having a different view. It’s holding that view without turning it into a conflict. The move that actually changes outcomes is reframing the disagreement as a shared process and risk question, and showing up with evidence already prepared. Done well, nobody loses. A weak assumption gets replaced by a stronger one, and the team ships something better together.