Dockgrid

Dockgrid is an easy-to-use data analysis orchestration tool for distributed computing.

Context

The product's primary goal is to create a simple and effective environment for small companies, universities, and bioinformaticians to run their pipelines from their machines without a lot of configuration or cloud.

Objective

In this project, my challenge was to propose improvements to the beta version of the service.

The Process

I used the fundamentals of Design Thinking to build a novel process and idea.

Empathise

Research

I initially began the research with desk research in order to understand the User. While doing this desk research, I made a CSD (Certainties, Suppositions, and Doubts) Matrix. It's a technique that you can use to define the scope of any new challenge. I usually use it before interviews to clearly understand the minimum I need to know about the User. The matrix has three columns: 1) what is already known, 2) hypotheses raised, and 3) what is still unknown and needs to be investigated. Then, being the CSD matrix ready, I start to listen to the users.

Define

In this step, I take the information I got in the research and define some crucial aspects to move on. Some of these aspects are the Target audience, User's pains, User's goals, and Competitors.

Competitors Analysis

I identified the companies that have the closest services to analyze their features, how they talk with a target audience and what I could improve upon.

List of Competitors - https://tower.nf/ - https://www.prefect.io/ - https://airflow.apache.org/ - https://github.com/features/actions

Ideate

Sketch

The sketch is a quick way to put ideas on the paper and test with the stakeholders.

Prototype

Solution

The solution's main goal was to reach simplicity without losing the many features that make the system a robust tool.

Design System

The beta version was built only using the Bootstrap default components and colors. In this new version, the stakeholders wish to give a personality for the brand, so I worked on an initial design system for the project.

Design decisions

In the initial research, I noticed that the interfaces of this kind of application were crowded. Too many features and data can cause distraction and confusion. I worked on a clean design with components that could be recycled within in different parts of the flow.

I chose to change the orientation of the cards to make better use of the screen space and decrease the vertical scrolling that existed on small screens. This pattern is also beneficial in mobile interfaces because we could use labels on the side.

Test

The "final test" is usability Testing performed by me with a sample of the system's users in the Figma prototype. The idea was approved with some minor changes.

What did I Learn?

• I improved my experience using Figma to design the UI templates;
• To use more "paper-prototype" to validate initial ideas.