Unqork
Unqork is a startup (founded in 2017; Series C as of today) focused on no-code application development and primarily serving larger enterprise companies. The Unqork platform aims to allow its users to rapidly build complex functionality through a visual application development platform.
I joined Unqork in June 2020 and served as a Senior and Lead Product Designer. As a design leader, I faciltated end-to-end design processes for critical initiatives for the company. I also played roles as coach and mentor to other designers on the team, and I served a stint as Interim Head of Design.
Project Samples:
Workflow
I led design across a cross-functional team to build out and mature Workflow, a business process automation tool. I led areas from design system implementation to building out new features driven by customer needs/opportunities.
Grids System (End-user Experiences)
I facilitated and led design for key end-user experiences, like our grids system which aimed to serve our customers in the Financial Services industries.
Workspaces (Redesign)
I led a cross-functional team to re-design “Workspaces” - the experience in which teams of Creators organize their application and project elements.
Module Builder (Redesign)
I led a cross-functional team to re-design “Module Builder” - the core product of Unqork’s No-Code IDE that allows Creators to configure applications.
Case Study 1: Parallel Execution & Timed Events
Role: I was the Lead Product Designer for Workflow for ~15 months. During that time, I collaborated closely with partners in Product and Engineering. My thought partners in developing experiences included internal SMEs and customers.
What was the current state of Workflow? What did customers desire instead?
Workflow is an Unqork tool that allows users to craft business processes via a visual drag-and-drop experience. Workflows orchestrate end-to-end user journeys and allows teams to manage the routing of data and connections to APIs/integrations.
At the time of this project, Unqork workflows were limited to being linear, non-collaborative, and time consuming. The example below illustrates a common user experience in workflow. Multiple roles might be interacting within a common business process, but they would have to wait for each other to finish their tasks to move along the journey.
Upon listening to customers over consistent cadences of communication, I learned that they wanted workflows to introduce higher amounts of collaboration between the roles within their business processes. To that end, end-users of workflow should be able to work in parallel and have automation assist them in their tasks.
Concepting towards solutions with the XFN team
Having a clear understanding of what customers desired, I collaborated with my Product and ENG counterparts to develop concepts that would lead to solutions. The main culprit of linearity within workflows was the lack of being able to bifurcate submission data traveling through a workflow. At risk of being overly simplistic for this case study, we concepted the “Inclusive Gateway” and “Parallel Gateway” to solve for this. I drew out these concepts to help teams align on a path forward.
Applying Rapid Prototyping to suss out use cases and gain validation
Through a couple sprints, the team gathered user feedback on concepts and sought to define the new feature. Being scrappy, I crafted mocks, end-to-end journeys, and prototypes to illustrate our continuous learning. The mock below represents a common customer use case. Here, I illustrate that two personas (a broker and an underwriter) could operate simultaneously given a set of logic conditions. The submission data of the business process diverges and converges upon the Inclusive Gateway nodes. Moreover, automation within the parallel processes guide and accelerate human tasks.
Continuous learning drives product iteration
While ENG was beginning to build out the MVP state of the feature set, my Product partner and I continued to meet with and listen to customers and other key internal stakeholders. Being close to the customer, I (along with my partners) aligned to a notion that multiple parallel users were now dependent to each other’s tasks and positioning within the workflow. While users could operate simultaneously, guardrails needed to be put in place so that the business process was not waiting excessively on any role to finish their tasks.
Impact
The team saw a significant adoption rate of parallel execution features (unfortunately, I can’t divulge these metrics). Moreover, the team heard positive qualitative feedback from both power users and novices. To this day, these sets of experiences are highly marketed and drivers of demos and many use cases.
Case Study 2: Introducing Atomic-Design Principles to Build Modern Interfaces
Is Unqork truly a ‘No-Code’ tool? Not when it comes to creating modern interfaces.
To build applications with Unqork, users (also known as “Creators”) configure with components - which are pre-packaged, coded assets defined to perform a task. Components might represent blocks of UI, logic, or data. Unqork customers with consumer facing apps (i.e., a Fortune 50 bank with millions of users), were highly demanding that the UI of their applications represented their brand’s liking.
Unfortunately, it was both technically challenging and time intensive to style Unqork applications towards a customer’s liking. From the Creator perspective, styling apps required diving into CSS. In essence, this required users to handle code (!), which is highly antithetical to Unqork’s core value proposition of being No-Code. From a business perspective, the company had to provide styling services to customers which was costly.
Listening for problems and opportunities
I usually begin diving into a problem space by learning from people that know it the best! Thus, I planned and organized interviews with a mix of customers and key stakeholders.
I learned that styling requires an intensive amount of code (which would be antithetical to Unqork’s value proposition and mission!), and there were very few people on the planet that had the skill set to do it within a platform like Unqork. Moreover, customers with consumer audiences had rigorous standards for displaying their brand’s styles in a modern way. Unqork would lose prospective clients, because the platform didn’t have a productized solution towards styling applications.
Uncovering a key insight
Having interviewed a few technical leaders, I understood that Unqork’s components were built from monolithic asset structures. Meaning, each component was composed from large blocks that were difficult to edit, update, and thus, style. Technical leaders actually wanted to transition to a more granular, atomic perspective - which would eliminate a massive amount of tech debt being featured in Unqork (let alone free up an ability to style components).
Leaning into “Atomic Design” to socialize a framework to a broad, XFN audience
I began leaning into existing literature on scaling granular systems. I found myself re-reading and getting inspired by Brad Frost’s “Atomic Design”. I then created shareable documentation to help other team members grasp and understand the concepts. After, I formed a hypothesis rooted in atomic design: If Unqork assets could be defined at an atomic level, then any component could be formed from atomic units AND an atomic unit could be accessed from any level along the hierarchy.
What would change about our customer journey if components were composed atomically?
Informing our product roadmap with novel experiences and visual storytelling
After supporting my Product and Engineering partners on a path towards validating our ideas, I focused on crafting productized solutions to show how our investment in atomic composition would bring value to Unqork. I drafted “key moments” through a user’s journey and presented them to stakeholders. Then, I crafted prototypes that allowed us to further socialize and validate solutions.
I provided narratives illustrating key moments to customers & senior leaders:
Proudly influencing the organization through design-led activities!
After socializing, validating, and iterating on solutions, I was happy to see concepts turn closer to reality. Senior leaders from both Unqork and our customers became excited about the prospect of easily styling their applications. Our internal teams were glad to see a solution built from sound principles (i.e., Atomic Design). Finally, the ‘Self-Service Styling’ initiative became a major investment in our company. As of writing this case study, the initiative is being currently worked on by our cross-functional teams.