The story in 30s
The problem. Entromy's report page, the most important surface in the product, behaved exactly like the PowerPoint it exported: over 96% of report views followed a pattern of open, export, leave, no filtering, no drill-downs, nothing the PPT couldn't do. Report customization was one of the main requests across 24 analyzed customer calls, clients called building leader-ready cuts "hard to operationalize."
What I did. Instead of redesigning screen by screen, I built the system first, then applied it everywhere: I wrote the platform's first data visualization guide, grounding every screen in one model, overview first, zoom and filter, details on demand. I mapped real user roles to dashboard types using behavioral data, so decision-makers got high-level scorecards and analysts got depth on demand, then redesigned six report sections with one reusable interaction model: filterable cards, drill-down modals, sortable tables, and AI-assisted comment summaries.
What changed. Reports stopped being a document clients received and became a product clients use: over half of reporting sessions now run past ten minutes, someone reading, clicking into detail, and working the data, not exporting a PPT and leaving. Dashboard views per user rose 41%, average session time rose 144%, and client-facing teams now call the redesigned UI "a gamechanger" for client conversations.
The thinking: a system before any screens
The biggest risk wasn't visual design, it was inconsistency. Six sections redesigned one at a time by intuition would have produced six different products. So before any screens, I wrote the platform's first data visualization guide, the document that drove the entire redesign and gave engineering and product a shared vocabulary for every decision that followed.
- → One interaction model for the whole platform. Every surface follows Shneiderman's principle, overview first, zoom and filter, details on demand: users see overall context and patterns before specifics, narrow down with filters, and pull detail only when they ask for it, instead of being overwhelmed upfront.
- → Roles mapped to dashboard types. Decision-makers (CEOs, CHROs, PE firms) get high-level scorecard views built for fast reads, analysts (managers, consultants) get detailed views built for exploration. This mapping came from actual behavioral personas, not assumptions about titles.
- → A chart taxonomy tied to data types. Gauges and indicators for scores, line charts for trends, stacked bars for distributions, ranked lists and tables for comparisons, so the same kind of data always looks the same way anywhere in the product.
- → A deliberate color system. Categorical palettes for unordered groups, sequential for progressions like participation, and divergent palettes reserved for data with a meaningful midpoint, like eNPS running from -100 to 100.
Solution overview
The clearest illustration is the eNPS flow, three levels deep, each one earning the next. Learning this pattern once unlocks the entire report, that mattered enormously for a product people open a few times a year, where every visit is close to a first visit.
- → Overview. The dashboard card shows the score, its quartile, and movement against benchmarks. A decision-maker can stop here, fully informed.
- → Zoom and filter. Clicking through opens the full eNPS page: promoter/neutral/detractor breakdowns, detractor insights ranked by gap, and the dimensions where detractors concentrate.
- → Details on demand. From there, individual comments, score calculations, and recommendations open in popovers and modals, present when asked for, invisible when not.
Results
- → Over half of reporting sessions now exceed 10 minutes, up from a pattern of opening the page just long enough to export, someone reading, drilling into detail, and working the data
- → Multiple "strongest week on record" cycles, with report clicks and exports both jumping roughly 90% week over week at peak, driven by admins actually using and distributing the new views rather than just generating them
- → Dashboard views per user increased 41%, average session time increased 144%
- → Org admins now drive 93% of report activity, confirming the redesign landed with its primary audience
Reflection
- 1 The core lesson: an in-product surface only earns repeat visits when it can do something its own export can't. As long as the UI mirrored the PowerPoint exactly, the export always won, it's portable and familiar. Interactivity had to be the product's advantage over its own output, not decoration on top of it.
- 2 The second lesson is that the system was the product. The visualization guide looked like overhead at the time, but it's why six sections shipped feeling like one product, why engineering conversations got shorter, and why the pattern still holds as new surfaces get added. Consistency compounds in a product people open a few times a year: one interaction model that repeats across sections means the second section is already familiar by the time someone reaches it.