Shopping for resources

Project overview

What is data.world?

data.world is a cloud-native data catalog built on a knowledge graph. It gives companies a complete picture of their data, however siloed it may be. With it, users can discover what data is available, fresh, and trustworthy faster.

At first, our issue was that users could only make changes to 250 resources (data assets) at a time, and this wasn’t communicated to them. Customers complained that the limit was unclear and too low.

But, the story was just beginning.

Performing actions to resources in bulk, such as moving or editing was complicated and frustrating. When selecting resources to change, users only saw a table of assets with minimal details. The interface to perform actions also did not utilize the space well and had confusing copy around the actions themselves. The entry points to the actions were also inconsistent.

The ask was to solve these disparate problems.

Who needs this?

Catalog curator

The catalog curator organizes and maintains data in the catalog, making sure it’s accurate, well-documented, and understandable. They work closely with the metadata and do not usually build the catalog.

Focus areas

• Data quality, definition, and discoverability
• Metadata management

Design goals

Having understood the catalog curator’s needs and the problems they currently face, I set design goals:

• Simplify entry points and make them consistent
• Business goal: make bulk actions accessible from collections
• Convey each bulk action’s distinct purpose clearly
• Communicate selection limits
• Create a scalable experience for all bulk actions

But wait, there's more!

I started by working with the existing flows but quickly realized they were missing crucial functionality.

Without a way to narrow down the list of resources, users were forced to start with all resources of a type in their organization. Then, they had to look through the list one-by-one for the resources they actually wanted to change. This played into why users were hitting the resource selection limit.

What they needed was a way to select exactly the resources they wanted, then make changes in bulk.

With that in mind, I added one more design goal: give users more control when selecting resources to change.

How many entry points???

Before I could jump into designing the feature, I made user flow diagrams of each entry point and each bulk action, including the ones that were out of scope for this project, since they would likely be picked up in the future.

The solution

Entry points

I improved the three entry points by making the dropdown menu items consistent.

Each bulk action has clear, concise copy so users know what operations they can perform.

Find what you're looking for

To help users find the exact resources they want to change, I added our core product’s search functionality into the flow.

Users can apply the same filters from the core product’s search page here to find the resources they need.

The “shopping cart”

A persistent, live list of selected resources, no matter which page of results users are looking at.

For bulk actions where multiple resource types can be selected, the cart separates selections by type for scannability.

Moving resources

Moving resources in bulk was significantly improved. Previously, it lived under Quick edit, terminology in the copy was confusing, and it did not convey a clear sense of to and from.

Now, users select the action upfront at the entry point and can clearly see where their resources are going.