Understanding the Problem

Deep Dive with Database Administrators

I began by getting to know the DBA persona, conducting:

• 15 in-depth interviews with database administrators from JPMorgan Chase, Walmart, ExxonMobil, and other Fortune 500 companies.

• 5 contextual inquiry sessions observing users in their actual work environments.

• Survey of 200+ users to quantify pain points.

• Analysis of 1,000+ support tickets to identify patterns.

Key Insights:

The research revealed that users were constantly monitoring high-volume streams of data, struggling to keep data organized, monitor incoming requests, and troubleshoot issues. All of these problems were causing bottlenecks and system shutdowns for businesses.

"The dashboard is the gateway drug for me...but if it's always pretty, then I don't look at it. It needs to show when there's a problem." — Study Participant 14

Strategic Alignment & Visioning

Executive Workshops: Setting the North Star

Before diving into design, I facilitated strategic workshops with C-suite executives and product leadership to understand the broader business context and align on modernization goals.

Executive Strategy Sessions:

• 2-day workshop with SMEs and executive stakeholders.

• Business context mapping — Understanding Db2's position in IBM's cloud portfolio.

• Competitive analysis review — How we were losing to Snowflake and Amazon Redshift.

• ROI modeling — Quantifying the cost of poor UX on revenue and retention.

• Vision alignment — Defining what "modernization" meant for enterprise data management.

SME Deep Dives: Understanding Technical Constraints

I conducted intensive workshops with subject matter experts to grasp the technical complexities we needed to simplify:

Technical Workshop Participants:

• Database architects (understanding scaling limitations).

• MLOps engineers (exploring auto-scaling possibilities).

• Security experts (maintaining compliance requirements).

• Support engineers (identifying top pain points).

• Field engineers (customer implementation challenges).

Workshop Outcomes:

• Identified 15 technical constraints that couldn't be changed.

• Found 23 artificial barriers we could eliminate.

• Mapped dependencies across IBM Cloud ecosystem.

• Created modernization roadmap balancing quick wins with long-term transformation.

  
  

The Breakthrough Insight:

DB2 Warehouse on Cloud users needed to scale resources frequently but were avoiding it because navigation was so painful. By redesigning resource scaling as a simple 3-step visual workflow with plain language and real-time cost implications, we could eliminate the majority of support tickets overnight.

"Pricing is nice to see inside the product. Transparent up front rather than customers being surprised." — Study Participant 15

Restructuring for Intuitive Navigation

The existing IA was a maze — 7 levels deep with 45+ scattered menu items. Critical features like scaling were buried under "Administration > System > Resources > Management > Scale." I led a complete restructuring to make information instantly accessible.

Research & Validation:

• Card sorting with 25 participants.

• Tree testing with 40 users.

• First-click testing to ensure discoverability.

The New Architecture:

Primary Navigation (5 Core Areas):

1. Overview — Dashboard with system health.

2. Resources — Compute, storage, scaling, backups.

3. Performance — Real-time monitoring.

4. Queries — SQL editor with visual explain.

5. Workload — Resource allocation.

Key Improvements:

• Elevated "Run SQL" from buried feature to primary access.

• Consolidated all data management (Tables, Views, Schemas) under unified "Data" section.

• Grouped system administration logically (scaling + backups together).

• Added Slack integration for alerts.

• Visual notifications (bell icon with progress indicator) for ongoing operations.

Drill-Down Example: Data → Tables → Specific Table → Properties/Columns/Load History (Previously required navigating through 7 different menus).