enterprise
Helping customers understand complex data relationships
MY Role
Founding Designer
Team
Founder + 14 others
COMPANY
Apiphany AI Company
Time
2024-Present
shipped
Yes
I designed an interactive node-based interface to simplify navigating complex data systems. As the founding designer, I wore many hats and owned the entire product design process, UX + UI — producing product concepts, producing UI libraries and Style guides, team facilitation, prototyping, user testing and working with engineers to get the designs implemented.
To comply with my non-disclosure agreement, I have omitted and obfuscated confidential information like the company name in this case study.
problem
Data Dependencies Was a Black Box
Product engineers were struggling with low visibility in their workflows. The data was all there—buried in nested structures, scattered across multiple tools—but understanding how one change impacted the system was painfully difficult.
Puzzle of Nested Data
Nested structures emphasize hierarchy but often obscure cross-level or peer-to-peer relationships.
As the number of levels and items grows, navigating and maintaining nested structures becomes increasingly difficult.
challenge
How might we help product engineers to gain a better visibility into their processes?
When I first encountered the challenge of visualizing the relationships between hundreds (and hundreds) of interconnected components, across multiple dimensions, I knew I was stepping into a design problem that required more than just creativity—it demanded clarity, scalability, and usability.
I needed to make these relationships visible, actionable, and scalable.
customer insights
Better way to represent nested data
Instead of jumping straight into solutions, I spent time observing engineers in a workshop as they navigated existing tools. Engineers weren’t just asking for a visualization; they needed a better way to think about their systems.
What I found was surprising:
Engineers weren’t just looking for a static map of relationships—they wanted context and real-time insights.
They relied heavily on mental models, piecing together dependencies in their heads because existing tools didn’t reflect how they actually thought about systems.
The bigger the dataset, the harder it was to zoom in on specifics without losing the big picture.
Flattening linear hierarchical views into a connected network.
early ideas
Node based approach
At first, we explored traditional tree structures and radial node diagrams. While they worked for small datasets, they quickly became unusable when scaled to hundreds of components. Nodes overlapped, relationships got lost, and users found it overwhelming.
what worked
Multi-dimensional Node Cards
Instead of forcing engineers into rigid structures, I designed a flexible, node-based system that allowed them to:
See connections instantly – Every component was a modular node card, making relationships explicit.
Explore dependencies fluidly – Clicking a node pulled up real-time analytics, risks, and cost impacts.
Scale effortlessly – Whether looking at 10 or 1,000 components, the system stayed intuitive.
To comply with contractual agreements, other work is restricted to put for public access. Please get in touch to learn more.
LEARNINGS & TAKEAWAYS
Product Shipped.
All the first customers experienced the work I did. It's a huge privilege to get ownership of a project that so many people will see and experience.
Takeaways..
Working in a Startup helped me in crafting my self learning, team facilitation and rapid designing skills. Because of a complex system, it was hard to break the mindset of database thinking and move to user focused mindset, but it turned out well in the end after iterations after iterations of experiments.
Nurturing good relationships with our stakeholders, helped me alot when I needed support like getting product feedback before an unexpected customer meeting.
Working with the CEO, I learnt embracing iterative improvement. Instead of aiming for perfection in one go, we met regularly focusing on small, consistent improvements over time.
Do more of..
Be meticulously and almost obsessively detail oriented in my work.
other contributions
Style Guides
I designed the entire product from scratch — color pallete, buttons, icons etc…
other contributions
Data Vizualizations
I designed the data visualization module for our product with AI features.
other contributions
Enterprise Search
I designed AI Search feature for our Platform
