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Alteryx

Building a World-Class UX Organization at Alteryx

Built Alteryx's UX function from 3 to 35+ across design, research, writing, and data analytics — establishing a data-driven design culture, redesigning core experiences, and delivering a 20% lift in trial-to-paid conversion.

Role
Senior Director, UX
Period
May 2018 – June 2022
Team ScalingDesign SystemsUX ResearchTelemetryEnterprise SaaSLeadership

At Alteryx I built the UX team from 3 designers to a global multidisciplinary organization of 35+ UX Designers, Product Designers, Researchers, Visual Designers, and UX Engineers. I also managed the Technical Writing team and helped set process and standards for product help documentation, in-product training content, and UI copy. Additionally, I managed the Telemetry & Insights team that enabled UX and Product to make data-driven decisions and validate design assumptions.

Through these teams I influenced decision-making across the company to drive improvements in product design, team process and structure, and overall product strategy.

Building the Organization

When I joined Alteryx, there were 3 designers supporting a complex analytics platform used by data scientists and business analysts worldwide. Over four years, I built and scaled an organization across five disciplines:

  • UX & Product Designers — embedded across all product areas
  • UX Researchers — establishing a mixed-methods research practice
  • Content Designers & Technical Writers — setting documentation and in-product copy standards
  • Localization Specialists — supporting global platform expansion
  • Telemetry & Insights Team — a first-of-its-kind data analytics function within UX

The Telemetry & Insights Team

This was one of my proudest organizational innovations. I created a dedicated team responsible for product instrumentation and behavioral data analysis — giving design and product teams visibility into real usage patterns, feature uptake, and drop-off.

This established a data-driven culture where design decisions were grounded in evidence, not intuition. The team's work directly informed roadmap prioritization at the senior leadership level.

Redesigning Core Experiences

Designer Cloud & Alteryx Intelligence Suite

The results of the team's work can be seen in two major product launches during my tenure: Designer Cloud and the Alteryx Intelligence Suite — both representing significant UX investments that redefined how analysts interact with the platform.

Trial & First-Use Redesign

I led a comprehensive redesign of Alteryx's trial and onboarding experience, reducing friction for new users and delivering measurable business results:

  • +20% increase in trial-to-paid conversion
  • 75% improvement in time-to-value

UX Lab at Inspire Conference

Every year at our Inspire conference we held an incredibly popular UX Lab — an environment where customers could get a sneak peek of new features and products, and our designers and product managers could gather invaluable user insight in real time. This became a flagship program for customer-connected design.

Design System Expansion

I expanded Alteryx's design system and unified patterns across cloud and desktop platforms:

  • Established a token-based color and typography system
  • Unified component libraries across product teams
  • Introduced automated visual regression testing

Result: ~15% reduction in UI defects across the platform

Technical Writing & In-Product Guidance

I led the Technical Writing team and established standards for:

  • Help documentation integrated with product release cycles
  • In-product tooltips, empty states, and error messaging
  • Training content and onboarding tutorials

This measurably reduced customer confusion and support load.

Outcomes

| Metric | Result | |---|---| | Team size | 3 → 35+ | | Trial-to-paid conversion | +20% | | Time-to-value | 75% improvement | | UI defect rate | ~15% reduction | | Delivery capacity | 5x increase |


Detailed artifacts and metrics available under NDA upon request.