Advanced Filters (Blackbaud)

The problem

Provide the Power of Advanced Querying and Filtering to a Broader Population

This is part of an ongoing project at Blackbaud to completely redesign the Query tools in the product.  Many users continue to use an older UI designed for DBAs to perform even simple query and data extraction tasks.  The team embarked on an effort to design a Query solution that would both provide the power of the existing tools and be easy enough all users.

The process

Two Distinct Users

In researching our user base, we found that we had two distinct users:

• DBA  these were users very comfortable with complex queries and working with large datasets.

• Casual Users while every organization might have one or two DBAs, they also have dozens of more casual users who need to access the database and perform queries.  These users are not comfortable for complex logic for building queries and so struggled with the existing DBA-oriented tools.

Competative Analysis

We are not the first team to tackle the problem of making complex Queries simple for users.  We heavily reviewed products like Salesforce, Pendo, and other CRM tools to see how they presented Queries.  

User Testing

The list of requirements and the ideas for the Query UI were winnowed down through successive discovery calls with dozens of current users.  Over the course of the discovery calls we settled on one design and pivoted to iterative testing of the individual components of the final design

The product

It's Getting There...

The designs are from the Prototype that was selected as the "best" design by our users.  It us based on the concept of the 'decision tree' where the users segment the data by adding properties and ranges.  Concepts like AND, OR, and NOT are not specifically called out, but are rather inherent in the structure of the tree.   Testing of the design was very positive and viewed as very accessible to both the DBA and Casual Users.  

Unfortunately, this design was not implemented despite its success with users.