Enhancing the UX of data governance

Introduction

Sydbank's Alation catalog stores thousands of tables, queries and articles — yet employees still solve everyday data questions over Teams, email and hallway chats. That siloed habit buries good work and slows new analysts. In a team of four at SDU, I led Study 3: the high-fidelity prototype and the usability test with real Alation users.

Research method

Five studies, each feeding the next.

A mixed-methods approach where each study built on the last — so decisions stayed grounded in real behaviour, not assumptions.

1. Study 01

   Interview analysis

   Re-analysed Sydbank's internal interviews: ratings, conversations and queries were useful in principle but overlooked in practice.

2. Study 02

   Observation & heuristic evaluation

   Netnographic review plus an expert pass against Nielsen's 10 heuristics — confirming near-zero community activity and the UI issues behind it.

3. Study 03 — my focus

   Prototype & usability test

   Built the high-fidelity Figma prototype — Threads, a redesigned dashboard, clearer states — and tested it unmoderated in Maze.

4. Study 04

   Mixed-methods data

   Triangulated Maze behaviour (heat-maps, completion, time-on-task) with qualitative email responses, coded in NVivo.

5. Study 05

   Communities of Practice lens

   Framed it all through Wenger's Communities of Practice — UI alone can't manufacture a culture of sharing.

Key features

Collaboration, woven into the catalog.

A high-fidelity prototype layering community features onto familiar workflows.

1. 01

   Threads

   A tag-driven discussion anchored to every table, query and article. Questions get asked in context and answers marked “Accepted” — so the next person finds a trusted resolution.

2. 02

   Curated home dashboard

   Latest Threads, Popular Queries and Featured Articles surface active content at login, replacing the static landing page with a living overview.

3. 03

   Clarified rating UI

   Ambiguous flags become clear positive / negative thumbs with colour-safe states and a tooltip explaining each rating's impact.

4. 04

   Undo toasts & micro-animation

   Real-time feedback makes actions reversible and the UI feel tactile — WCAG-AA throughout.

Grounded in

Decisions backed by principle.

• Nielsen's 10 heuristicsAudited and redesigned the UI against each principle.
• Fitts's LawSized interactive targets for faster, surer hits.
• Jakob's LawMatched mental models from LinkedIn & Gmail.
• WCAG 2.1 AAContrast-safe states across every component.
• What do prototypes prototype?Houde & Hill framing to pick the right fidelity.

Reflection

The honest read: usability improved, but a single prototype can't create a community of practice on its own.

• 01Half of participants didn't expect to use the features more — the gap is partly workflow and culture, not just interface.
• 02Non-anonymous responses risked social-desirability bias; I'd anonymise participation next time.
• 03With more time, I'd run a moderated before/after test for step-level insight.