Relationship Explorer
Lead Designer • 2021 - 2024 • IBM
Explore your data landscape and relationships through visualization
Overview
Relationship Explorer (RE) is a canvas-based visualization tool that helps enterprise users understand how data assets, governance artifacts, and business concepts relate across a knowledge graph. By replacing fragmented, list-based views with interactive exploration, RE enables users to form an end-to-end mental model of their data governance ecosystem.
Impact
Introduced a relationship‑first, canvas‑based way to understand enterprise data governance
Improved data literacy by making complex structures explorable and comprehensible in an intuitive way, reducing the time, effort, and business cost to gain a comprehensive understanding of data governance
Positioned RE as a foundational visualization layer within IBM Cloud Pak for Data
Delivery
Beta release
IBM Cloud Pak for Data 4.8.0 (Dec 2023)
Recognition
OTAA 2023
Outstanding Technical Achievement Award
D&UX review score
B+ (75)
Highest in Data & AI at the time
"From the very moment we started to use this feature, it quickly became a critical part of our tool kit in building and maintaining extensive industry content."
IBM development user (Blog)
Context
Problem
Enterprise users struggled to understand how data assets and governance concepts connected across complex systems. Existing tools surfaced metadata in isolation, creating high cognitive load, low data literacy, and inefficient governance workflows.
Users
Builders: Data stewards and governance experts performing impact analysis and compliance audits
Explorers: Analysts and business users discovering and understanding available data
Use cases
Performing impact analysis on governance changes
Investigating governance and compliance of sensitive data
Managing metadata across catalogs and hierarchies
Exploring and discovering data using business semantics
My role
As the lead product designer, I owned end-to-end UX across:
Problem framing and concept definition
Interaction and information architecture
Research planning, synthesis, and iteration
Prototyping from early concepts to coded validation
Collaboration with UX Engineering and cross‑functional stakeholders
Project stakeholders
Product Management (multiple transitions)
Engineering and UX Engineering
UX Design
UX Research
Content Design
Enterprise clients and beta users
Method
Concept → Research → Iteration → Coded Prototype → Research → Beta Launch (2023) → Iteration
2021
Initiate
Ideated initial concepts based on customer requests for "business lineage" during a period of limited product management and engineering support.
2022
Validate & Design
Established the design foundation, delivering a cohesive end-to-end concept and IA validated through foundational research.
2023
Build & Launch
Focused on technical UI feasibility, using coded prototypes to solve performance challenges before leading the product to its Beta launch in December 2023.
2024
Enhance & Scale
Built on user needs and feedback identified from research to improve consumability and control at scale.
Research and validation
We performed 4 research phases over 3 years, including primary and secondary research about users and use cases, coded prototype testing, and post-launch usability testing.
Our research validated Relationship Explorer as intuitive and valuable for governance‑focused users, and informing onboarding improvements for business users.
8
Enterprise clients
201
Observations
58
Findings
Constraints and complexity
Large, dense knowledge graphs
Multiple personas with different mental models
Performance and scalability requirements
Regulated environments demanding accuracy and trust
Outcome
Enabled users to form a clear, end‑to‑end understanding of data relationships
Reduced friction in governance and impact‑analysis workflows
Established a scalable interaction model for relationship‑centric exploration
Delivery
Beta release: IBM Cloud Pak for Data 4.8.0 (Dec 2023)
GA release: IBM Cloud Pak for Data 5.0 (June 2024)
UX Quality
DUX Review (Oct 2023):
Overall score: 75 (B+)
Strengths: Visual Design (86), Use (84)
Identified onboarding as the primary improvement area, informing the GA roadmap
Recognition
Outstanding Technical Achievement Award (OTAA) — Nov 2023