POWER BI

Business Intelligence for "The Rest of Us"

Making the complex seem simple and approachable is the highest manifestation of User Experience.  Taking data modeling and visualization from the rarefied realm of IT departments and highly-paid experts and making it available to "mere-mortals" was no mean feat, and designing Power BI for the Microsoft Cloud & Enterprise organization my proudest accomplishment!

 

 

Power BI Desktop and Service

While Microsoft has been a dominant market leader in data technologies for many years, paradigm shifts in the marketplace, encroachments from new players like Qlik and Tableau, and the "democratization of data" threatened to leave Microsoft behind.  A tenuous situation for the software giant, but also a golden opportunity!  Starting from my initial designs for an internal demo project, code named One-Click, proposing a bridge between Excel and the original Sharepoint-based Power BI, it blossomed into a focus for the entire organization and the Power BI Suite of products was born. As design owner of the precursor product Power Pivot, design of framework, architecture, original workflow, and concept fell to me to drive and coordinate.

Precursor products Power Pivot, Power View, and Power Query

Power Pivot was a popular "data modeling" tool, but with a focus on "experts only" and dependent upon tight integration with Excel, a great strength because of Excel's popularity, and a great deficit because of its lengthy development timelines, encumbering its market competitiveness.  Equally handicapped yet innovative was Power View, lost in the enormity of Excel and not-quite a fit.  And finally, Power Query, the industry leading data cleaning tool, but with a focus on the expert of experts.  Bringing these tools together into one holistic experience, approachable to a less-specialized audience defined the opportunity.

Power BI Desktop

Power BI Desktop united these disparate-but-related workflows into a seamless whole, aimed at the business specialist content provider.  Power BI Service provided an integrated forum for presenting and sharing the insights derived from the reports developed in Desktop, closing the loop on a market winning offering that not only put Microsoft back on the data map but returned the company to its place in the forefront of data development and design!

 

Original end-to-end mock-up walkthrough of Power BI architecture.

 

SQL SERVER REPORTING SERVICES: REPORT MANAGER

Update and Align On-Premise Data Solution with Power BI

Report Manager

SSRS has been a long-established leader in on-premise data reporting but was well overdue for a functional and visual facelift, exacerbated by the runaway success of Power BI.  Formerly satisfied customers longed for the aesthetic and navigational advances of Power BI, but on their own secure intranets.  As a first step, SSRS was given an overhaul as well as onboarding the new technology offerings of recent acquisition Data Zen.  Acting in a dual role, I both led the redesign effort and managed the onboarding of Data Zen design and coordination, across multiple geo-locations, of Data Zen's development efforts with the Power BI development team.

 

VISUAL STUDIO: SSDT (SQL SERVER DATA Tools)

Data Developer Tools Optimized for a Professional Audience

SQL Server Data Tools

Having made data accessible to a new, less-technical audience, making developer tools more optimized for a new generation of developer turned the design question on its head.  Just as a previous generation's tools were too technical for the masses, so the developer tools were less than optimized for their audience as well.  An extensive canvas of modern development environments, developer research, and collaboration with the Visual Studio team lead to major improvements in the SSDT experience.