Report Builder

Web App, SaaS
Internal App Design

Role & duration

  • Lo-Fi Wireframes

  • Hi-Fi Wireframes

Team: Product Manager 2 Product Designers 4+ Developers

Product Designer Cision Inc., Aug 2022 - March 2023

Main markets for research: North America & Europe

Overview

Report Builder is an internal tool for Cision's analysts who create regular (weekly, biweekly, monthly, annually, etc.) reports. This brand-new tool allows users to connect the analytics inside each report to the original sources in various databases.

Hundreds of internal analysts should use the tool in the future.

A Report Builder is now in development and will automate hundreds of hours of additional analytics work.

The Problem

Cision's analysts, who create weekly reports for different clients, struggled with updating them weekly. The information inside reports did not change drastically, but because analysts needed to extract this information from various tools and place it into the report, the update of each report took hours, which isn't time-efficient and could be automated to save tons of time for analytics.

This tool was created to automate the update part of analytics work and also to help analytics create a report in one place with different database connections.

My Role

Another designer worked on the starting phase of the product, and my goal was to continue successful product development. The main objectives for my work on the tool were:

  1. Discover the best ways to incorporate all essential features into the Report Builder and avoid making the workflow too complex and inefficient.

  2. Redesign all screens, giving the tool a new look and consistency with the company's other products.

  3. Continue design discovery, adding new features, and supporting further growth.

Applied skills:

  • Rapid Prototyping

  • Clickable Prototyping

  • User Interviews

  • Design Thinking

  • Usability Testing

  • Visual Design

Discovery Process

During the discovery process, we collected information about how analytics create reports right now: how many tools and different internal databases they use, how many outside tools they use, how much information needs weekly updates, and how much time is wasted on manual updates of the reports.

For future design and development processes, we gathered samples of the reports that analysts usually create. These reports became the basis for report structure grids.

First Wireframes

A previous designer created proto-wireframes with the first assumptions about how the app should work. These were my starting points to improve the design as much as I could in the short term and make it more user-efficient.

New High-fidelity wireframes

Newly gathered feedback and overall discovery process review allowed me to create a new look for the Report Builder App. I redesigned all screens, improved flows, and continued the design and UX of new features.

Also, I conducted regular workshops with the team to fully understand and discover the best ways to implement each feature.

  • Reports Dashboard - Table View

  • Reports Dashboard - Table View

  • Connecting Reports’ sources

  • Customizing Report

  • Report View

  • Adding a chart flow

  • Adding a chart flow

  • Adding a chart flow

User Interviews

To get the best results from the design process for this product, I conducted user interviews with stakeholders and potential users during all significant changes. I also held regular workshops within the team to find better solutions and discuss potential problems. All results were implemented in the next iterations of the app design.

Future Redesign

Future app development steps included redesigning Cision’s newly developed Design System. During the first phases of the project discovery, the Design System didn’t exist yet, and the main focus was on the features and user flow.

This screen shows how implementation would change the interface alongside new features planned for the following quarters.