Systems | Development | Analytics | API | Testing

One of the most interesting developments coming out of the current COVID-19 crisis is that people are looking at and interpreting data like never before. People that have never expressed an interest in data are now thinking about data and trying to understand what it means for them. There is a lot that businesses can learn from this. With COVID-19, people are taking the time to look at highly complex data, distill it, and assess what it means for their own behavior and lives.

The world has turned upside down. You don’t need me to tell you that. And, thanks to weeks of working from home, a new way of working may be upon us when we flip back. Many are seeing this period as a pivotal time in changing the way many organisations will function. Business has seen first hand that it can run effectively with many of its people working remotely.

One of the big standouts for me in the recent environment is just how much of a shock COVID-19 has been for organizations. This is because many have become complacent about their data over the past decade and they’re now exposed. As Warren Buffet said, "Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked." To deal with the current economic situation everyone now has to lift the lid on their organization.

It was three years ago, just after the Gartner Magic Quadrant (MQ) came out, that everything in customer success changed at Yellowfin. We had made it into the MQ again but we weren’t positioned where we believed we should be. We were a product-driven company that had been first to market for many of the functionalities that have since become expected in what BI vendors offer today.

Our Head of Product Design and Creative Director, Tony Prysten, has worked in brand, design and advertising roles over the course of his career. Bringing his wealth of experience to Yellowfin, he now shapes the creative and UX experience of our product. Here he shares his thoughts on how design flexibility improves the dashboard experience.

Yellowfin 9 is defined by the belief that design matters. The ability to create a cohesive design look and feel across analytics dashboards and reports is particularly crucial for independent software vendors (ISVs) that embed analytics into their applications. Interestingly, when you take a look at the wider analytics market, few vendors are providing the toolkit that designers and developers need to build the analytical experiences they want.

With Yellowfin 9, we introduced to the world an incredibly flexible, action-based dashboard builder and progressive data storytelling capabilities that advance the capability of the dashboard experience. We’ve received great feedback since then and this month, the newly-released 9.1 further enhances the user experience of analysts, developers, and business users in Yellowfin’s action-based dashboards, data storytelling, and data discovery products.

We’re continuing our series on the slick new features and design that you can find in Yellowfin 9 - a game-changing analytics product packed with new capabilities to help you get to actionable insights faster. It was time for a change to the look and feel of the Yellowfin platform and we also knew that some of the workflows could be enhanced. So, the major release of Yellowfin 9 was our chance to give Yellowfin a new look and improve the user interface and workflows while we were at it.

As we navigate unprecedented times together, we inevitably find ourselves to be participants in a global data storytelling exercise; either as an author, contributor, or a reader. There are now hundreds, if not thousands, of data storytelling examples out there. It’s a riveting data story that’s been read over 40 million times, receiving over 230,000 claps, and translated into 30 languages. But is this data story ’safe’?

Right now, we are seeing the importance of trusted data in helping people navigate the situation we are currently facing. And by people, I mean everyone! A lot of people who would normally never look at a report or use a dashboard, are sharing reams of data on social media, discussing #flatteningthecure and infection/mortality rates. The list goes on.