Teradata is a Cloud Database and Analytics hardware and software provider known for their Relational Database Management System which is used in many large scale data warehousing applications.

Being a hardware and backend servicing focused company most of the companies product development work/process hadn't included a lot of UI development or design focus let alone the User Experience. However they were quickly developing out more Analytics tools and were starting to grow out their UI/UX team(s). 

 

The Goal

I joined Teradata as an Information Architect/Interaction Designer (the only UX focused role in the company at the time) with the goal of helping grow and mature out the User Experience Practice to include research/usability testing, shared team guidelines and standards/a Design System and a shared UX Strategy across the different Teradata products and teams.  

 

The Challenges
 

As noted above the overall UX Maturity for Teradata at the time was very low which presented some difficult challenges including:

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• Lack of awareness and understanding around User Experience

• Slow but moving shift at the time to the software vs hardware market  

• Finding an Executive Sponsor

The Outcome
 

The presentation below was used to help educate the Sr Director and Executive level team on some of the key challenges with  the current practice, missing roles and responsibilities and opportunities for growth.

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With a better understanding of the needs support was given to help start the journey towards growth and UX Maturity. As a results during my tenure I was able to help start the team with integrating Research into the Design process and conducted on the (if not the) first Usability studies onsite with Delta, Home Depot and Macy's.  Their input was critical in the design and development of the Teradata Data Labs product. 

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