| Client: | Memgraph Ltd |
| Deliverables: | Desktop & web application (v1.0) |
| Time: | June 2018 - Nov 2018 |
| Team: | Product & Business dev, 2 full-stack engineers |
| My role: | UX/UI Designer |
Introduction
Memgraph is the world’s first real-time distributed graph database, which aims to deliver high-performance at enterprise scale. It is engineered to support the needs of enterprises with colossal amounts of data. Memgraph aims to help businesses harness the power of real-time connected data, so they can build the next generation of intelligent applications.
Problem space
The product was expanding beyond purely CLI use and needed to create an application that provides a graphical user interface to manipulate graph database data.
Research
Research continued based on the initial one made for the same company, this time focusing more at gathering feedback from users (through surveys) that primarily manipulate database data.
Problems defined
- How to enable data scientists to get insights from the data?
- How to visualise complex graph database query results?
- What is needed to monitor and maintain the database?
- How to make running queries easier?
Goals
- Ensure obtaining a better market share by making the database product more usable
Target audience
- System administrator
- Database administrator
- Data analyst & Developer
Ideation and validation
In the first (beta) iteration of the project, we tried to focus on two activities for the users: monitoring and querying data at the same time. Another point of focus was exploration of the querying process where users should be enabled to perform consecutive database queries, save them and also search for them.
Memgraph Lab Wireframes
Key findings
I tested our assumptions by setting up unmoderated usability studies based on the lo-fi prototypes that were created out of Sketch wireframes. Key findings that were discovered during the research:
- Different user roles want to use tools tailored to their needs
- Users need a seamless way to interconnect tools that they are using (management vs. querying)
- The space to run and manage queries needs to be distraction-free zone
Monitoring and querying of data proved to not work well for users because they wanted to focus on one action at the time, depending on their role (for example, a business analyst might not be interested to know what is the workload of the database). The overview of database queries with separate lists for query history and favorites proved to work better for users.
UI design
UI design of the application follows the previously established look and feel of the brand. In two iterations, there were adjustments to the statistics on the dashboard (based on user feedback) and top navigation was removed since this is a desktop application. Project frontend was developed by reusing existing components and styles.
Memgraph Lab UI
Project outcomes
The project’s beta was published within the desired timeframe, and a newer version is freely available at memgraph.com.
Check out my other case studies:
- Increasing platform use with visual testing Sauce Labs
- Discovery for the in-house use product dunnhumby Media
- Designing a solution for querying data Memgraph Lab
- Building demo applications to help GTM motion Memgraph
- Finding product market fit for an early-stage idea Bunch.ai
- Product engagement optimization Powerlinx
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