Dun & Bradstreet, Semantic Arts

SEMANTIC DATA USER INTERFACE DESIGN

 

THE CHALLENGE

 

I partnered with top executives from Dun & Bradstreet and a national data firm, Semantic Arts, as the UX lead for a global enterprise data project. 

 

D&B needed three new interface products using a semantic web ontology.

 

Interface #1. A Navigator for the enterprise to access all available D&B data within the products for the first time in one interface.

 

Interface #2. A map creator to map data from legacy products and systems to other products through the new logical data model.

 

Interface #3. A map extractor tool to map a unique customer data set to a new product through the new logical data model and extract fresh data.

 

Semantic Arts oversaw architecture of the new complex semantic ontology while the UX team began phase one of the first interface.

 

THE APPROACH

 

Our success as designers would rely heavily on two things; successful navigation for our user groups through very complex data relationships and the product looking and feeling like a Dun and Bradstreet product.  

As we started our research, we began by diving deep into the data model to understand the complex data relationships, the tasks that our users were trying to complete, and the business objectives. Then in the design phase, we studied the Dun and Bradstreet style guide as a starting point to define the UI patterns that would work best to tackle our established pain points. 

 

THE RESULT

 

The interfaces are still in development. Initial usability testing showed that we were able to achieve both markers for success.

 

During usability testing, a user said, "You guys really nailed the look of D&B [Dun and Bradstreet]." This was one of our objectives. Another objective was navigation through complex data. Our testing showed that all of our users were able to tell what "waypoint" (the given piece of data being viewed) they were on in the interface at all times.