Alteryx One, re-architect a hybrid data platform for data transformation automation
Zero-to-one information architecture design to overhaul the navigational framework of a hybrid platform for data cleaning and analytics.
- My role
- Team Lead, Architect
- Time
- 6 months, 2025
- Worked with
- 2 designers, 1 researcher, 1 PM director & 2 tech leads
Problem
Fragmented tools in different ecosystems result in poor adoption.
Alteryx Analytics Cloud has a few cloud apps sitting on top of a platform, whereas Alteryx Designer is a desktop app for local data processing. Legacy customers on Designer don’t know how to use the cloud, and new cloud users don’t take advantage of the power of Designer.
The vision
One app to rule them all
The business directive is to have one desktop application to contain all apps and shared platform features.
Design challenge
How to structure this app to host all existing disparate features for a very complex and large SaaS data platform?
At its core, this is an IA problem. A well-designed IA should match users’ natural workflow.
Key insights
Users think in terms of files, not apps. Thus the new IA should make file organization and navigation efficient, and follow users’ natural way of working.
I dug into the past research and constructed a jobs-to-be-done mapping that reflects how users work with Alteryx offerings to accomplish their data jobs.
Key solution #1
“Projects” to empower users to keep files of the same data task organized
The long-term north star design vision introduces a new concept called “Projects”. Each project contains any number of files of any type that fulfill the same data job, alongside all the datasets used for this job. This is grounded in the insight that users rely on multiple different types of files for one data task.
Key solution #2
Using tabs for open files, and consolidating file organization and platform features
The design was inspired by Figma, whose users have a similar workflow. Alteryx One users need a place to create and retrieve files, but they spend most of their time inside individual files. In addition, Alteryx One users need easy access to platform features. Platform features and file browsing are grouped into the same space, since they are both in support of non-editing tasks.
Testing & iteration
Based on multiple rounds of testing, we added an “Overview” page based on the user need for a multi-purpose starting point.
The Overview page would serve as the starting point for multiple user intentions: quickly starting a new file or data connection, getting oriented on what file types are available and why, resuming recent work, and monitoring automated job runs.
Scale back to MVP
To descope without sidestepping, apps were introduced back as filters for files, not as separate apps to launch.
While stakeholders were positive about the direction, the business need for a quicker time to market demanded a descope. The Projects concept was scoped for later, but a file-centric model remained. Without projects, apps still worked well as a file-grouping mechanism.
Outcome & impact
Users loved it, as reflected in a 97% task success rate, and numerous positive comments directly speaking to the design intent and goals.
New users see it as simplified, intuitive, and existing Designer users feel it is inviting for them to explore more features. These directly speak to the adoption goal we set out to achieve.
