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TABLEAU DESIGN AUDITS

Company: Tableau

Project: Design Audit of Tableau Prep Builder

Role: Lead UX Designer

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Tableau needed to perform an in depth design audit of Prep Builder to start to address places where we can improve consistency of pattern usage and workflows across Tableau.

Benefits of an audit:

  • Find inconsistencies and places where quality isn’t adhering to the brand guidelines

  • Understanding the process behind why decisions were made and opportunities to improve them

  • Stronger brand identity and position in the market

  • Consistent communication, visually and verbally builds trust and meets users expectations

  • Users will understand the product faster and easier with streamlined user flows and better communication

  • Provides a solid foundation from which to build on and add features too

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The Problem

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The How

I was the product design lead for this work. I worked closely with the Data designers which allowed:

  • Building a sense of ownership. Involving the teams and considering their viewpoints will make the adoption of the design system easier.

  • Develop shared vocabulary. Is it a “navigation bar” or a “tab bar”? The audit would start the process of developing a consistent language for our products. Having a consistent shared vocabulary would allow for the high discoverability of components.

  • Understand, align & maintain. Understanding design decisions and use cases to spark the conversation of deciding which patterns should stay, which should go, and which are new?

  • Get buy in. The visual audit conveys the message that our products don’t exist in isolation; each product that the teams are working on is part of the Tableau ecosystem, emphasizing the need for cohesive visual branding across products.

UX audits are an important step in the design process because they allow the team to:

  1. See what the landscape is like for a particular component or workflow. How are others doing it?

    1. Identify the key tasks in the product or area. How do our competitors?

  2. Identify what works, what doesn’t, and what might be missing. Where is there an opportunity for improvement?

  3. Understand what’s considered “best practice” and why. Why reinvent the wheel if there is already a standard convention that users are familiar with?

    1. Where are we using the DLS (our existing best practices) and where are we not?

      1. Where we are not, is there an opportunity to use a pattern from the DLS instead?

      2. If no, how can we get the pattern up to our best practices and get it in the DLS?

    2. Where are we using the DLS but perhaps incorrectly?

    3. Where do we have patterns that need to be included in the DLS?

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Areas of focus for the audit:

Visual Branding
Took a visual inventory of all the visual elements in Prep across the different areas and identify inconsistencies that need to be updated. This means from colors used, icons, spacing and typography.

UX/Patterns
This is an important area to look at and find out where conflicting patterns exist in Prep, which cause confusion and frustration. Looking at the DLS and identifying existing patterns and widgets that can be used consistently is the goal.

Tone/Message
Took an inventory of our tone in Prep allowed us to take a look at the tone at a high level and see if we are giving users any confusing messaging or if any of our messages could be more helpful. This means looking at instructions, error messages and even text for our buttons. 

Desired outcome of the audit:

 

Existing pattern audit: Identifying individual pattern gaps and inconsistencies and potential ‘quick wins’ where teams are not using a pattern where they should be and could upgrade to an existing pattern


New pattern development: what are we missing that could greatly impact customer experience? Focusing on user flows is a good idea because it is a more holistic approach than just doing one-off dropdowns, buttons, etc. Having an audit of what these flows are is the starting point to working on the right patterns in the right order.


Holistic view of tone and messaging: Assess what our tone is and correct any strings that are non-conforming or use confusing terminology.

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The Result

Tableau Admin Universe

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After finishing the Tableau Prep Audit, I was asked to do a much larger audit of Tableau's entire admin experience. This was highly needed as this area had grown significantly over the last 15 years and not much attention was paid to it. Most people didn't know what products admins used and when they did,  what that looked like. Then there was the relationship of all these products to one another. This project became fondly known as the Admin Universe.

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This is a visual map I created showing all the products that admins use in Tableau and their relationship to each other. This is one of the end pieces to a very long and in-depth discovery and audit of each product and how they function in the admin world. 

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This was a system level audit and I worked with many people and teams to uncover what each products role was in the admin experience. I led the design and research from start to finish and presented my findings to the entire design team when finished. 

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