So, it’s been nearly a week since Ardoq released their new user interface and I’ve had a good amount of time to get my head around the changes and what they mean to users of the platform. While it’s great to see a more contemporary minimalistic interface, the real change is how you use the platform.
Here are my thoughts as it stands, noting that these changes are still in Beta and many items are still being addressed:
The good
1) Accessing visualisations of the data has been turned on its head with it going from a “give me the complete picture and I’ll filter out what I don’t want to see” to “give me the bare bones and I’ll add what I do want to see”.
While users of smaller data sets probably won’t be able to notice the benefits of this change, larger data sets should see significant performance boosts in getting to their desired data quicker.
2) When hovering over the visualisation templates, a metamodel of it is displayed. This gives you a snapshot of what each template is going to represent, rather than having to make sense of the title and description to determine it.
3) Self servicing of the Best Practice modules speeds up rolling these out, especially for those in the AU/NZ time zones, although I will miss talking to Uday on the in-application chat who was doing this.
4) Survey response approvals is a great addition to the functionality of the platform and allows for increased data governance
The unknown
1) Governance of the creation of visualisation templates could get out of hand, especially for teams that have a large number of Enterprise Architects or users with “Write” permissions.
2) Not sure yet if it is better to have lots of simple visualisation templates that you need to build on to a viewpoint, or less but more complex ecosystems. Both have pros and cons that will come out over the next few months as usage increases.
3) Accessing a workspace via the Assets library section on the homepage takes you to a hybrid of the old and new. I understand the reasoning (not all visualisations are yet in the “new” yet) and assume this will be closed out in future releases.
The missed opportunities
1) The core Ardoq platform and Ardoq Discover do not share visualisations. While these are 2 very different user groups which access different sections of the platform, it means that there may be duplication and inconsistency between them. I believe Ardoq is looking at collapsing this in future.
2) The “hover” feature is currently only available in the library list and not on the tiles shown on the homepage.
3) The introduction of a Component Overview page is a fantastic feature, however you can only access it via one method, which disappears if you find yourself in the “hybrid” mode.
All in all I’ve found the changes great and while recognising these are still in Beta, thus still a work in progress, I think they are a vast improvement to an already unbelievable and world leading platform. I’m so pleased they’ve taken the opportunity to address some issues in the process rather than simply give the platform a new coat of paint. Onwards and upwards…
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